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Scotland Performance Schools


tartanbrush

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14 hours ago, afca32 said:

I think we've definitely made a lot of progress in producing better technical players in the last 5+ years. We're still behind most other countries but at all levels of the game I think we've improved.

I've started playing amateur football for the first time in a while and most teams play out from the back these days, it's less about playing percentages and winning 50/50s.

As a child I played mostly in the Edinburgh League 1st Division and would consider myself one of the more skilful players in that league. Until this season I coached a 2010s team over the last few years and they played in the 4th Division, there were quite a few players who are technically better than I was at that age. They're made to play out from the back throughout primary school, and the majority (not all, granted) of coaches buy into that.

Some part-time football can still be a bit attritional, but certainly in recent seasons there have been more and more teams trying to play good football. 5 or 6 years I'd say Elgin stood out as one of the few teams in League 2 who played out from the back and kept the ball on the ground. Now it's fairly common and limited cloggers that used to be ten-a-penny are becoming relatively rare.

Brilliant to hear that! Hopefully it's a trend that's carried on throughout schools and leagues in Scotland

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On 13/11/2021 at 22:14, Diamonds are Forever said:

It will always be very hard to tell how effective they are because we'll never know whether these guys would have made it anyway and to what extent the performance school made a difference. If it turns out we're consistently producing really good players from them over the next few years then I guess it would be pretty conclusive but it's far too early to tell at the moment.

I think there is a good chance they would have made it anyway, but what I am certain of is that they were ready for international football far earlier than they otherwise would have. They have the awareness, in-game intelligence and confidence that usually takes years of senior football to develop. It's not a coincidence that a lot of Scottish internationalists are late bloomers. They need more time to develop before reaching their potential. But I also think the PSchools will raise the ceiling for every player that went there.

It's also not a coincidence that the 2 teams that have supplied Scotland with a lot of internationalists are the two that had employed a similar model to the PSchools first - Dundee Utd & Celtic. It's well known how many Celtic developed players have been in the Scotland squad this decade, but you also have the likes of Souttar, Gauld, Russell, Armstrong, and a number of others that spent some time in Dundee Utd's youth set up. 

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  • 1 month later...

With all the press about Calvin Ramsay over the last few weeks, it's worth pointing out that he is also a Performance School graduate. Of our most coveted young players most (Gilmour, Patterson, Ramsay) are Performance School graduates. 

There has also been quite a bit of interest in the press about Kerr Smith moving to an EPL team again - he is also a PS graduate.

The only of our in demand young players who didn't attend a PS that I can see was Aaron Hickey, however he came through the Celtic system at Ninian High School which I believe is a similar setup.

All very promising I think.

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30 minutes ago, craigkillie said:

It's hard to tell if they're good because they were in the Performance Schools or they were in the Performance Schools because they were good.

Haha, true. It's also probably survivorship bias - here are four that are great and forgetting all the ones who are now league 2 jobbers or not even professionals. We could take a better stab at answering if that is true if the SFA released any kind of information on outcomes, but they don't.

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1 hour ago, albagubrath said:

Haha, true. It's also probably survivorship bias - here are four that are great and forgetting all the ones who are now league 2 jobbers or not even professionals. We could take a better stab at answering if that is true if the SFA released any kind of information on outcomes, but they don't.

I think though the level some of the Performance School Graduates get to could be telling. They were started to produce Elite Level players, so hopefully they can do that, one or two already look capable of playing at that level

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