Croatia

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Back in the day Scottish youngsters honed their skills playing kicky aff the wa' and dribbling, shooting, keepy up etc etc in the backies with a tennis ball. Scottish players were amongst the best in the world, we had Baxter, Steel, Johnstone, Dalglish the list goes on.

For too long they taking young players that showed any promise (promise often being looking like they might get to six feet in height) at around the age of 9 / 10 and putting them into 'academies' where were taught how to pull jerseys, feign injury, dive, meet the ball with the head rather than control it and were taught to be hard and play the pass rather than take the ball in and own it. They bulked them out which often resulted in them losing the mobility that some of the Scottish greats had. There was a time when every side had plenty skilful and exciting players on the field at the same time, now we might see two or three per squad.

I now see some smaller and more skilful Scottish players start to come through but only really at clubs like ours and below. The bigger clubs (OF, Hearts, Aberdeen) still, generally, look abroad for skill and to Scottish players for height, toughness and workrate. Of course there are exceptions before a certain person responds.

With things like small sided games and restricted heading training being introduced maybe we will see future youngsters being encouraged more toward pace, mobility and control which might in turn get us toward the Croatia type side - maybe.