Report promised by SFA to boost homegrown talent

A soon-to-be-published report will "talk about changes" Scotland needs to make to develop more homegrown football players, Scottish FA chief executive Ian Maxwell has promised politicians.

Giving evidence to the Scottish Parliament's sport and well-being committee, he said the nation's top clubs needed to be more strategic in developing native talent.

Maxwell was pushed on player development following a report last year that showed Scotland trails countries like Denmark, Norway and Croatia in giving top-flight game time to players under the age of 21.

"We are pushing clubs to be more strategic in developing Scottish players," the head of the governing body said.

"We've got a youth review that will be published soon that will talk about a lot of this and it'll talk about changes we feel we need to make.

"Do we have enough players playing in the Scottish premiership right now? No. Can we do more to get Scottish players playing? Yes.

"How we do that is the million-dollar question, but clubs need to be more strategic."

Maxwell told the committee, primarily set up to look at the welfare of players in the youth academy system, clubs need to get together and look at countries that have been more successful in youth development.

"When you look at countries like Portugal, who have got clubs like Benfica, Sporting Lisbon, countries that are really successful at developing their own players, they get them into the first team, they sell them abroad for tens of millions of pounds, which is then re invested back into the Portuguese footballing eco-system," he added.

"How do we get our clubs to start thinking more strategically and go down that road and think about development from that perspective?"