Saline_par, Thu 3 Sept 23:19

My lad has just started football training aged 6 here in Bergen.
The biggest difference I see is how relaxed the coaches are. I think it`s a culture thing which would take decades to change in Scotland. Read a BBC article recently talking about how youth football in Central Scotland was banned for a week due to player, parents and coaches behaviour. I couldn`t ever envisage a situation like that ever happening over here.

Indiapar1, Thu 3 Sept 20:36

Scotland is a similar size to Norway in terms of its football and environment.

The Norway sysem

1. Norway effectively operates a distributed national academy rather than relying exclusively upon professional-club academies.
2. Norway`s philosophy is essentially:
Don`t decide at 9–11 who will become a professional footballer.
Formal selection does not really begin until approximately 12. From there the funnel gradually narrows.
3. Mass participation and elite development coexist.
4. Norway concluded around 2010 that improving player development meant improving the people who develop players, rather than merely creating more academies.
5. Academies are assessed across more than 200 criteria and classified from one to five stars. Did the academy actually produce footballers who subsequently played meaningful senior football?
6. Norwegian clubs increasingly regard academies as productive assets.
7. Academies don`t actually produce elite players. Senior football does. The critical period is approximately:16-21.
8. For many Norwegian clubs, playing a talented 18-year-old is considered an investment. Scottish clubs frequently see playing an 18-year-old as a risk.
Scottish managers operate in an exceptionally short-term environment:
relegation risk → managerial pressure → experienced signings → fewer academy minutes → academy players stagnate → loan/release → clubs conclude academy isn`t producing players.
It becomes a negative feedback loop.
Norway has attempted to create the opposite.
9. Between 2016 and 2025 Norway constructed 539 new artificial pitches and renovated another 586.
10. Coaches aren`t required to play identical formations, but there is common terminology and understanding of:
technical development
decision making
game-based learning
player ownership
training methodology
performance environments.
11. Norwegian club can accept that:
an 18-year-old may make mistakes for six months because he could become a €10m player.
Scottish clubs have historically imported substantial numbers of experienced English lower-league players because they represent perceived short-term certainty.
12. Norway has built something resembling:
Participation → local coaching → broad identification → regional development → elite academy → transition → senior minutes → transfer value → reinvestment
with feedback loops connecting each stage.

Norway spent more than a decade doing precisely that. The players appearing now are, to a significant degree, the output of decisions taken around 2010–2017, not interventions introduced last season.

If Scotland started genuinely restructuring around that model now, the appropriate performance horizon wouldn`t be the 2028 Euros. It would probably be the 2034–2038 international cycles.

Dandy Warhol, Fri 4 Sept 09:07

A get together to see what we can all do to help the old firm.

onandupthepars, Fri 4 Sept 19:51

Good posts Indiapar: I read with interest everything about the more relaxed and intelligent Norwegian system and your comments on the SFA meeting.

Did nothing come of the meeting except an airing of the SFA`s Transition report versus Scottish clubs and development staff`s views that our small leagues are working against us?

No motion put to vote?

wee eck, Fri 4 Sept 21:26

Interesting analysis at HT in the Livi-Stenny game by Ian Graham, ex Director of Research at Liverpool FC, basically confirming what we all suspected - that young Scots don`t get enough minutes in the Premiership because of pressure from clubs and their supporters to win games!