Time for B Teams

[football maniac]

10 hours ago, EdTheDuck said:

When was this? Did I miss something?

4 points out of 6 in the last 2 games against sides ranked higher and in one case much higher would be deemed as progress imo. Our performances have been much improved to and I feel this is largely down to the connection of the Celtic boys.

[DA Baracus]

11 hours ago, football maniac said:

4 points out of 6 in the last 2 games against sides ranked higher and in one case much higher would be deemed as progress imo. Our performances have been much improved to and I feel this is largely down to the connection of the Celtic boys.

Shut up you fandan

[AlbionMan]

On 18 August 2017 at 13:04, football maniac said:

People will argue that all the guys playing together in a team in a competitive environment might be more beneficial than having players spread all over the place on loan. The Germans with Ozil and the like grew together as part of the same team. 

Germany has two national football leagues with 18 teams in each, below that the country is organised into regional leagues from which reserves teams cannot be promoted into the national leagues.

Those promoting the idea of Scotland following the German model should remember that they are not comparing similar national systems. As others have said throughout this topic it has nothing to do with improving Scotland's national team and all to do with benefitting Glasow's ugly sisters.

To use the German model we would need two national leagues with at least 16 full time teams in each, that's not going to happen and even if it did, I don't imagine the ugly sisters would accept their youth teams being shunted off into, and stuck in a regional league. 

[German Jag]

Dritte Liga is also national.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/3._Liga

[Tulloch Gorum]

If Scotland have young players who are pretty good, but not good enough to consistently get results against other national teams of similar strength, then the answer is not getting them to play more games against Berwick and Elgin.  The young players who are good enough to play for the national team, or for their club team in Europe, will not be in the Weans' Teams anyway. How would Scotland or Celtic benefit from having Kieran Tierney spend his Saturdays at Balmoor or Ochilview?  Aside from being an unacceptable change to the integrity of the senior national leagues, the supposed aims of introducing youth teams to the league set up are based on nothing.

 

Stupid idea, get it punted.

[BallochSonsFan]

On 23/08/2017 at 19:44, Tulloch Gorum said:

If Scotland have young players who are pretty good, but not good enough to consistently get results against other national teams of similar strength, then the answer is not getting them to play more games against Berwick and Elgin.  The young players who are good enough to play for the national team, or for their club team in Europe, will not be in the Weans' Teams anyway. How would Scotland or Celtic benefit from having Kieran Tierney spend his Saturdays at Balmoor or Ochilview?  Aside from being an unacceptable change to the integrity of the senior national leagues, the supposed aims of introducing youth teams to the league set up are based on nothing.

 

Stupid idea, get it punted.

I'm not entirely in agreement with this, but on the whole it's broadly correct.

Young players could certainly learn from being part of a competitive team. Doesnt matter whether it's on loan to another top flight side, at a Championship club or even in League 2. Players need to be playing to develop and kids can develop the right professional mentality playing as part of a lower league side whilst maintaining full time training at their parent club. There's a lot to be said for learning what it takes to be a footballer. It wont always be easy and doing the hard miles around the lower leagues is undoubtedly going to be a wake up call for the kids who have come through pro youth.

Colts teams dont really give kids the same exposure to proper competitive football. An 18 year old would learn more going to a lower league team on loan rather than playing colt team football knowing that they have absolutely nothing to play for in the colt side.

[Jan Vojáček]

Interesting how unpopular this is in Germany

 

[Snakebite]

is it aye?

[CityDave]

On 10/29/2015 at 14:01, mrman2011 said:

Scotland failed to qualify for Euro 2020, one of the major problems is the development of young players and the amount of game time that they are getting in a competitive environment.

The bigger team must be able to field (B/Development) teams within the Scottish system, Be it in the "42" or in the Scottish Highland/Lowland leagues.

These teams would be Under 24 and will play at the same time as the first team and there would be a cap on how many players from the first team would be able to play

Celtic for example could get their under 19s and play them in the B team and allow them to develop together and get used to the tough aspect of Senior Football, instead of going on loan and faulting in their development.

Loans would still happen and will still be beneficial.

Celtic could play in League 2, Rangers in Lowland League etc and form it from there, expand the Scottish League and improve the divisions of below, loosen the critieria for Junior/amateur clubs to join in.

We have U20's in the Challenge Cup now and this has obviously benefited our national team given the improvement since this was introduced. Who would have thought Celtic U20s getting pumped out by Annan in the first round would have such a positive knock on effect, really warms the cockles.

 

[mrman2011]

Still in favour of B Teams.

[sjc]

I won't be happy until we have a Celtic & Rangers B, C & D teams in the Scottish Professional Football League system. 

It'll be a slow and lingering death of the game until we do. 

[ajwffc]

I won't be happy until we have a Celtic & Rangers B, C & D teams in the Scottish Professional Football League system. 
It'll be a slow and lingering death of the game until we do. 

You are forgetting E & F in the Lowland and South of Scotland leagues

[Bazil85]

I won't be happy until we have a Celtic & Rangers B, C & D teams in the Scottish Professional Football League system. 
It'll be a slow and lingering death of the game until we do. 

B teams will be the death of the game. The fans of the clubs at the top need to open their eyes to the football view point of other fans. Why would league 1, league 2 or even Championship clubs want to or get pleasure out of turning their competition level into a glorified training exercise?

There are also a few fundamentals to why it wouldn't work in this country compared to other structures.

1. 10 team leagues. Can you imagine a situation where the big five have strong Colt teams at league 1 level. It would mean for actual clubs to get promoted it could either be impossible or we could realistically have a team finishing ninth that qualify for a promotion play off

2. If you think that's unlikely, look at other leagues with colts. Majority are in second tier. For it to be remotely successful the players in Colt teams would have to be better at that age than our senior league 1 or even championship level players.

3. Following on from point 2. Even if the Colt team produce really decent young players similar to German, Dutch and Spanish Colt teams. These players would be easily good enough to play in SPL. Do you really see a promising under 24 year old staring against East Fife and Albion Rovers developing to a level where he could perform at a World Cup? Very little chance of that.

4. It doesn't go far enough. If fans of the bigger club really care about developing young quality Scottish players then we should be campaigning for our best clubs to do it. For me it would be a lot more beneficial and make a lot more sense to bring back the eight Scottish player rule. Give clubs three years notice and say by 2020 eight if your starting 11 must have been developed at your club for at least three years pre their 20th birthday. The eight Scottish player rule went in 1995 and we lost qualified for a tournament in 1998 after always regularly qualifying. Coincidence? Maybe or maybe not.

Few follow up points about the last statement. Before anyone starts banging on about employment law, the eight Scottish player rule does not breach any laws. There is no rule on signing foreign players. You could sign as many as you want. It would be a rule of the game not a law. Similar rules exist to why Scotland can't play 11 Brazilians in international football.

Secondly, Celtic fans that might worry about impacting them in Europe. Celtic aren't competitive in Europe anyway. They are there to make up the numbers. They may make it to the group stage roughly half the time and on occasion early stage after Christmas but that's it. Would being forced to develop a foundation of Scottish players make a great difference? Maybe financially to the fat cats but it wouldn't make real difference to fans. Unless they consider finishing bottom of a CL group stage occasionally an actual achievement.

Finally for anyone going to say Celtic already do this. They don't. Their strongest possible 11 right now, I would say only one player is Scottish and developed through their academy (Tierney). Forrest, and McGregor possibly as well but would likely be on the bench in their absolute strongest team. Can you imagine if the, Rangers and everyone else had eight young quality Scottish players every week. Mouthwatering.

[sjc]

13 minutes ago, Bazil85 said:

 

B teams will be the death of the game. The fans of the clubs at the top need to open their eyes to the football view point of other fans. Why would league 1, league 2 or even Championship clubs want to or get pleasure out of turning their competition level into a glorified training exercise?

There are also a few fundamentals to why it wouldn't work in this country compared to other structures.

1. 10 team leagues. Can you imagine a situation where the big five have strong Colt teams at league 1 level. It would mean for actual clubs to get promoted it could either be impossible or we could realistically have a team finishing ninth that qualify for a promotion play off

2. If you think that's unlikely, look at other leagues with colts. Majority are in second tier. For it to be remotely successful the players in Colt teams would have to be better at that age than our senior league 1 or even championship level players.

3. Following on from point 2. Even if the Colt team produce really decent young players similar to German, Dutch and Spanish Colt teams. These players would be easily good enough to play in SPL. Do you really see a promising under 24 year old staring against East Fife and Albion Rovers developing to a level where he could perform at a World Cup? Very little chance of that.

4. It doesn't go far enough. If fans of the bigger club really care about developing young quality Scottish players then we should be campaigning for our best clubs to do it. For me it would be a lot more beneficial and make a lot more sense to bring back the eight Scottish player rule. Give clubs three years notice and say by 2020 eight if your starting 11 must have been developed at your club for at least three years pre their 20th birthday. The eight Scottish player rule went in 1995 and we lost qualified for a tournament in 1998 after always regularly qualifying. Coincidence? Maybe or maybe not.

Few follow up points about the last statement. Before anyone starts banging on about employment law, the eight Scottish player rule does not breach any laws. There is no rule on signing foreign players. You could sign as many as you want. It would be a rule of the game not a law. Similar rules exist to why Scotland can't play 11 Brazilians in international football.

Secondly, Celtic fans that might worry about impacting them in Europe. Celtic aren't competitive in Europe anyway. They are there to make up the numbers. They may make it to the group stage roughly half the time and on occasion early stage after Christmas but that's it. Would being forced to develop a foundation of Scottish players make a great difference? Maybe financially to the fat cats but it wouldn't make real difference to fans. Unless they consider finishing bottom of a CL group stage occasionally an actual achievement.

Finally for anyone going to say Celtic already do this. They don't. Their strongest possible 11 right now, I would say only one player is Scottish and developed through their academy (Tierney). Forrest, and McGregor possibly as well but would likely be on the bench in their absolute strongest team. Can you imagine if the, Rangers and everyone else had eight young quality Scottish players every week. Mouthwatering.

 

You are aware my post wasn't in any way serious? Or am I missing a double whoosh?!

[Bazil85]

You are aware my post wasn't in any way serious? Or am I missing a double whoosh?!

Sorry I didn't realise I responded to you directly. Was about the body of the thread.

[peternapper]

Spoiler

 

There is no funny side to this, the dicks in charge of our game will not be happy until some version of this comes to pass, anyone with even a small sense of decency will want to throw this out along with twats like Doncaster & Reagan who seem to want to wipe out lower league football in Scotland & leave us with  something not worth thinking about.

[edinabear]

I really don't see why people would get annoyed with 4-5 colt teams playing in the east of Scotland, south of Scotland or highland league. They will all enter at the bottom of the pyramid and should only be allowed to progress to a certain level, some have suggested league 2.

It doesn't spell the end of league football and if anything could bring a bigger interest, crowd and sponsorship to a level where some of the crowds are in the 10s and 20s.

[DA Baracus]

Nope

[itzdrk]

Inconveniencing clubs in the long term just so they can try make their exhibition team (that plays 4 times a year) better is absolutely unacceptable 

[lubo_blaha]

9 hours ago, edinabear said:

I really don't see why people would get annoyed with 4-5 colt teams playing in the east of Scotland, south of Scotland or highland league. They will all enter at the bottom of the pyramid and should only be allowed to progress to a certain level, some have suggested league 2.

It doesn't spell the end of league football and if anything could bring a bigger interest, crowd and sponsorship to a level where some of the crowds are in the 10s and 20s.

How would playing in those leagues benefit a future Scotland player? Any player of future international quality should be capable of playing in League 1/2 at least while in their late teens. Premiership clubs already loan a lot of their youngsters to the Championship, League 1 and League 2 so I don't see how putting them several tiers below would aid player development.