The Celtic Academy - Part 1

Part I - We look at the academy and wonder - is it working?

The facts according to Celtic website:

Building a Pathway

The Celtic Youth Academy give young players the support and developing the skills required to become professional footballers.

SINCE 2000/01: 

• 51 players have made the first team

• 1 in 3 have become professional footballers

• 19 have played in the UEFA Champions League

• 41 have become full internationals

(These numbers have probably changed but like most things youth related I doubt they have been updated on the website recently)

Now the above reads really nicely I think, but does it reflect today and what we see happening on the pitch, and do we give enough recognition to our Academy setup, especially our young pros who are in our B team and Under 18s and below.

My answer is no in all areas, and I apologise in advance if this doesn’t reflect the experience that you the reader may have had, all I can do here is reflect on what I have seen, listened to and understood and if people want to reply, discuss and share their experiences then all the better.

I’m also not yet familiar with the female academy structures and setup so again my apologies but having never seen it I don’t feel it would be fair to comment at this time.

So, I write hoping to generate a few key things:

·       Discussion

·       Recognition of what our academy looks like

·       Who is involved

·       And what I’ve learned about it having spent some time watching the B team, Under 18s and Under 16s over the last 8 months - meeting young players both current and ex, their families, a few agents and from doing a little bit of research and observation of my own to get a feel for the setup and those involved.

Why am I writing this? Well quite frankly because I want to see our club be considered as one of the best in the world in this area. I want to see more McGregors, KTs, McGeadys and McStays be fundamental parts of our club moving forward. Lads like Turley, Sedwell, Borland, Donnelly, Cummings, Ferns, Dargie, Mulgrew, Meechan, Isuguzo and Daley are just some of the names trying to live the dream. If,  like me, you have had the pleasure of meeting some of the young people and families involved in academy football you really appreciate the reality is extremely tough. The physical and mental demands it puts on young people is huge and when you watch them, listen to them, and engage it really opens your eyes to how much commitment and support it takes to get a sniff of going to the top.

Scottish FA & Youth Academy - The issues

There are things that I’ve heard are common in youth football in Scotland that leave me dumfounded:

• Pay to play models (hidden under the guise of donations) becoming more common at full time clubs.

• Expenses contracts becoming rife - with clubs then seeking fees or blocking players going on trial at clubs that are offering fully paid pro contracts when players are getting 5 or 10 mins every few weeks if they are lucky

• Numerous issues around a total lack of professionalism and at times bullying - I have even heard one story from another club where a coach spat in the face of player and is still in his role.

So, when I read the SFA fluff piece about youth football and getting players from academy to first teams, I found myself thinking it’s all been said before and nothing will come of it because the people with the power to change things won’t change a thing and I don’t believe clubs are that fussed with many stuck in the old days of appointing coaches on name or who they know, many still telling players to hatchet other players and all the BS that should be booted out of the game years ago. In my opinion the only thing that report will do is look stellar in the archives until they write another one in 10 years time, no doubt spending a lot of time and cash to do so.

Equally some supporters of our game are just as guilty (and I include myself) because at almost every club in the Premiership and at some teams below, the majority of us would like a new signing from elsewhere over a homegrown talent being giving an opportunity, because signing players is exciting. Where as a young player coming out of the B Team, reserves or u18s who have lost a lot of games last season doesn’t seem quite so attractive compared to the media buzz teams create around signing a player - like when we signing Kwon from the Korean 2^nd division and this gets more hype than Turley making his pro debut. All the media, flashing lights and videos appearing on YouTube and TikTok, Instagram etc…

(I think the above image sums up how many supporters feel about those at the very top of the SFA)

The full SFA report can be read here and while I agree with the majority of it, I just don’t see anything changing unless, all of a sudden, the SFA become a pro-active and professional outfit at the top and not just a bunch of blazers who go to the same golf and country clubs to pop a few things down as SFA business on the expenses.

Throughout the transfer window people were rightly scrutinising our recruitment policy, our scouts, head of recruitment and shouting from the heavens for the board to open up the purse strings and spend some money, but very few people were asking who we have within the club that might be able to step up. Was the Sinisalo signing required or could Josh Clarke have been a viable backup to Kasper Schmeichel off the back of a good loan spell at Ayr United? Why is Matthew Anderson being loaned out again while we sign a player with no option to buy in Valle? And do we have a striker in the setup who could be the third option if required?

It's the same at AGMs, loads of questions about spending money on the things we see on a Saturday as we go to the ground. Stadium, players etc; big ticket items so to speak, but what about having the best training equipment for our youngsters.

Why do we only have 1 camera for filming training or games on the pitch outside the main door of Lennoxtown instead of multiple to ensure we are seeing everything and not some pretty poor-quality footage from 1 vantage point?

Why are we not looking to spend some of our £80m cash on the sort of equipment you see at Dortmund, Salzburg/Liefering, Liverpool, Ajax and Benfica?

Where is the desire Celtic to want this to be the best it can be at Academy level?

Is anyone asking why we seem to have so many players in the B Team, U18s and U16s…. is it because we believe in the players, or is it with a view to activating development fees because we know that down the line these could have value and the expectation is FIFA, UEFA and other governing bodies are going to push for those fees to be higher over the coming years. In theory, this is meant to be a tool to support smaller clubs. Sadly, like anything done with good intentions, we will see big clubs take advantage of it because they can afford to hold more players and appear more attractive to many players and families. The clubs are now so aware of FFP and know those monies can be classed as 100% profit that this stock piling of youngsters seems to be becoming common at the top clubs.

So, let’s start with funding.

I think most Celtic supporters know the Celtic Pools and Paradise Windfall go a fair way to helping the academy setups. Despite having asked in numerous places and looking through our accounts and various other bits of media at this point I don’t know how much it costs to run the setup. With that in mind I spoke to someone at an EPL academy who advised that their Elite 1 setup costs the club in the region of £5m to £6m per season and they have a setup that has children from age 5 up to u23s (Premier League 2), which goes a bit beyond our Academy, which goes from 5 to under 18s and reserves (which I assume means B team). I know that Falkirk are trying to rebuild their academy after what I believe to be a truly idiotic move by Paul Hartley and the Falkirk board at the time, getting rid of it so they could spend more on first team players, it didn’t work and huge credit to John McGlynn and guys like Tony Begg for making them a well-run club again and who want to have a youth system in place, but they are having to work extremely hard to generate the 250 to 300k a season to get the academy to where it should be. Hopefully the cup game vs us added some much-needed funds to add to that pot as well as helping the first team.

As with most things at Celtic the supporters contributions via the windfall etc are top class but the biggest question is how we use the funds and what we do top class…..

This is the layout as per the website FAQs:

Professional Academy (Under 18s)

Intermediate Academy in partnership with East Dunbartonshire Council (Under 13s, 14s, 15s & 16s)

Junior Academy (Under 10s, 11s & 12s)

Development Centres (5 years old and above)

Within that if we use the website as our fact find this is the link to who works within the boys academy setup:

Celtic FC Academy Coaches | Celtic FC Academy

If you follow the club, you’d notice some fairly obvious absentees on that page.

• Darren O’Dea - Player Pathway Manager.

• Johnny Hayes - B Team Coach

• Adam Ashgar - U18s Manager/Coach/Chaperone maybe….(I’ll explain this later and I promise it’s merely a light hearted joke, not a personal attack).

I was happy to see us bring new faces in so and had high hopes that guys like Adam and Johnny along with us having a pathways manager would be the start of a move to get more players into first team contention.

Every club will talk about valuing people and I could go on and on for a few pages about the state of the official website is in when looking at this area and why it’s important to keep these things updated, and how poor the communication is in this area but I won’t (I know there’s a new website coming so maybe they’re just waiting for that update before making changes(!) .

Quite simply anything academy related looks out of date. Staff, players the works. Poor stuff from the clubs otherwise very good media team so I’m going to throw a wee plug here to a good lad who is doing a better job of talking about our academy than the club:

• Celtic Youth and Loan Updates on Twitter / X, whatever you want to call it:
  Celtic Youth & Loan Updates (@CelticYLUpdates) / X

Drop it follow. It’s a great way to keep up to date with the Academy setup.

The setup, players, staff, families and culture

The club say the purpose of The Academy is:

• Develop Champions League Level Players

The Objective of the club:

• To produce a “World Class” academy

The philosophy of the academy and club is:

• To develop the player and the person

Setup first as it’s easy:

Club resources in terms of grounds and development centres in Scotland are:

• Celtic Park

• Lennoxtown

• Barrowfield

St. Ninians School (Intermediate Programme Partnership)

Three Development Centres located in the west and central belt:

• Toryglen

• Ayrshire

• Falkirk

These are in place with the restrictions on how far / how long it takes academy players are allowed to travel through the various age groups for training. Basically, it means we can recruit players from pretty much most of central Scotland and have them within 1 of the facilities listed above in the mandated travel time / distance.

We have Lennoxtown (above), a lovely setting on a nice summer day beside the hills and it’s so peaceful. I was up there a few weeks ago and at one point in the second half vs Hamilton there was a goal kick about to be taken and absolute silence in the darkness, almost eerie as you couldn’t see the hills that had been set in the background when the game kicked off, and then a young Hamilton lad went and spoiled it with a shout of “come on lads we are doing great, keep it going” while the Celtic team respected the moment and stayed silent - something they managed for 95% of the game. Truth be told it was an awful game for us, for Hamilton a stubborn and dogged performance with a few sparks of quality from the team managed by one of our own Charles Mulgrew. 3 points to the Accies and back to the drawing board for the Bhoys.

The club has decent facilities up at Lennoxtown from what can be seen but nothing amazing bar the scenery. We all know about the indoor pitch fiasco (Cheers for that Pedro). A pitch that turned out to be so small that I believe it’s been turned into an extended gym. 3 Outdoor pitches, no proper area for spectators and trust me if it’s mild and breezy down in George Square and you are en-route to Lennoxtown then nip in to the outdoor clothing store and buy some ski gear because it will be swirling winds, arctic type conditions and if it’s Sept to March and a 7pm KO it’ll be pitch black by the time the game is done so make sure the lights on your motor are decent for the drive home. I’ve really no idea how Broony, KT and co stepped out on to those pitches in shorts and t-shirt in the heart of winter. I’d be full eskimo gear with a flask of hot tomato soup.

You might also want to take a torch and help light up the nearside touchline as refs struggle to see it under the tea lights that are meant to be floodlights. Three times I’ve seen throw-ins given when the ball is still 3 yards inside the pitch and god help the players who are sent to go looking for balls that go flying over the netting behind the goal and into the wooded area. Couple of those head torches need to be added to the kitbags.

Then we have Barrowfield (planned design above), the place that an ex-player from the 90s told me you would often find surrounded with police tape and covered in broken Buckie bottles on a Monday morning because the local bams would use it as a battle ground at the weekend. That once battleground for the local boxing matches to win a bottle of 20/20 and a 20 deck is now being redeveloped into a facility that will be a home to the Celtic Women’s team and the Academy teams.

This was the last update on the official site:
Raising the roof – new Training Centre update (celticfc.com)

My question around this is we will have people at 2 different locations and it’s not a criticism, but I wonder what the thinking was behind it? Are there restrictions on making changes at Lennoxtown to increase capacity and hold everyone under 1 roof? Or was there a feeling that separation of resources across 2 locations would be better for some reason? It would be great if there was a clarity around these things.

Mind you folk regularly take the mickey out of the board for being tight and accuse them of having Tory values so becoming land barons might be quite fitting. We could buy a big car park as well as they’re really popular at some clubs.

Next time we will have part II - The players

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