MSPs will question SFA chief executive Ian Maxwell and his SPFL counterpart Neil Doncaster about the treatment of children in the Club Academy Scotland (CAS) system at Holyrood tomorrow in the latest development in a long-running dispute that stretches back 15 years.
Maxwell and Doncaster will speak to members of the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee at the Scottish parliament about “welfare and sustainability in youth football”.
The move follows the complaint that was made to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) about certain SFA and SPFL rules by the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland and campaign group RealGrassroots in December last year.
The complainants alleged the rules restricted youth players’ freedom to move between club academies, violated United Kingdom competition law, were in breach of human rights and potentially constituted the economic exploitation of children.
The CMA have since revealed they will not be launching a formal investigation.
A spokesperson said, “We wrote to the Scottish Football Association and the Scottish Professional Football League in March to remind them of their obligations to comply with competition law – particularly in relation to their rules around hiring young players and to recommend that the organisations assess their compliance.
“In early April, we received replies from both the SFA and SPFL which set out the action they are taking in response to the CMA’s letters, which includes reviewing the relevant rules. We appreciate their swift engagement with the process.”
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Maxwell wrote to Clare Haughey MSP, the convener of the Health, Social Care and Sport committee, back in August and confirmed the SFA is “consulting on possible changes in policy and practice in this area”.
Real Grassroots, an organisation which was set up by Willie Smith of Hillwood Boys Club and Scott Robertson of Musselburgh Windsor due to their concerns about the state of the grassroots game in this country, lodged a petition entitled Improving Youth Football in Scotland at Holyrood in 2010.
The Public Petitions Committee praised the SFA and SPFL for the changes they had implemented during the years which petition PE1319 – the longest running in the parliament’s history – was being considered when they released their final report back in 2020.
However, the committee at the Scottish parliament recommended ‘very strongly’ that multi-year registrations for players under the age of 16 in the Club Academy Scotland set-up should be abolished when its findings were made public.
The children’s commissioner argued they breached six articles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child – which MSPs had voted unanimously in favour of incorporating into domestic law three months earlier.
That registration has since been amended slightly. However, a child at a CAS elite club still signs a two-year registration when they turn 15 which they are unable to be released from unless the club agrees or their appeal to the Young Player Wellbeing Panel is successful.
The SFA have brought their procedures in line with FIFA statutes following feedback from the commissioner and reimbursement of training costs is now only payable when a player signs their first professional contract. But the SPFL rules still stipulate that a “development contribution” is due.
Gunnercooke, the lawyers acting on behalf of RealGrassroots, believe the “no-poach” and “no approach” rules, along with “implausibly high” development contribution fees which clubs are liable to pay before a player turns professional, breach competition law.
The elite CAS clubs are Aberdeen, Celtic, Dundee United, Hearts, Hibernian, Kilmarnock, Motherwell, Rangers, Queen's Park and St Mirren.
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Clubs insist the rules prevent larger academies from raiding smaller academies and taking away players they have spent time and money developing over a number of years and also give kids long-term stability.
But Nick Hobbs, the head of investigations with the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland, alleged the Wellbeing Panel acted in the interest of the clubs not children when he spoke to the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee in June.
“The Wellbeing Panel is a really good example of the kind of attitude that underpins all of this,” he told the committee. “On the surface, it looks and sounds like a very positive mechanism for facilitating that movement between the clubs where necessary.
“But when we met with the SFA we asked, ‘In what circumstances would you envisage a wellbeing panel would refuse permission for a child to move from one club to another’. They weren’t able to tell us. That strongly suggests to me that the wellbeing panel exists not as a mechanism to facilitate that movement, but as an obstacle to prevent it from happening.
“Children will tend not to raise complaints when there are significant administrative processes that they have to go through and barriers that they have to jump over. I think The Wellbeing Panel is designed to restrict movement between clubs rather than facilitate it.
“The underlying issue here, and it always has been, is that the clubs principally view these children as economic assets and have rules and processes in place which allow them to be monetised. That SFA has made rules which are in the interests of clubs and not of the children.”
Maxwell spoke to the committee back in the December of 2023 and argued that the governance of Scottish football was “robust” during a debate on the need for an independent regulator in the game in this country.
But the last time that Doncaster was at Holyrood was when he gave evidence to the Public Petitions Committee during a discussion about the pro-youth set-up in Scotland in 2017.
