Sports Feature By Kyle Sharkie

OUR small but proud nation is riding high on our World Cup qualifying success and Scotland has an American dream on the horizon. 

However, is the country blinded by our current success? How does the future of football in Scotland look beyond.  

UWSNews decided to take a step back from the here and now and dive into the future of Scotland’s rising prospects. 

The bottom line is that Scotland aren’t producing enough academy talents and when they do, they barely scratch the surface of first team football and are sold for little money to English academies. Take players like Ben Doak, and Billy Gilmour from both sides of Glasgow £600,000 and £500,000 respectively. Neither managed to become standouts at their teams but furthered their developments in England becoming the players they are today.  

Scottish teams are not willing to risk it on a developing young player especially Rangers and Celtic, Dale Walker a youth academy coach and professional scout gives us insight on why this is the case: 

“Rangers and Celtic are the hardest managerial jobs in football, there’s so much pressure from the fans to have instant success, at Rangers and Celtic it’s that risk factor of playing these young boys in the first team.” 

 If we delve into the SFA’s Scottish youth report, it suggests Scotland are doing the opposite of the top modern European academy models, not giving these young players time to mature, judging them far too early in their lives and leaving them with no hope of a career. 

The Scottish Football Association  has not helped this situation by closing academies – including the announcement in October 2025 to close the Grange Academy in Kilmarnock – and giving professional B teams no league to play in.  

If we are not producing players good enough for the national team, come the next World Cup qualifiers we could be left with a squad packed full of inexperience doomed for disaster on a collision course straight back to the dark days in between now and 1998.

We need to give the young prospects a chance for the good of their promising careers and the good of our country.