The pathway promise: Why Scottish football is struggling to produce young talent

Scottish football is wrestling with a growing concern over the number of homegrown players who are making to the top of the game. Calum Ferguson was an Inverness Caley Thistle academy player but only played twice for the first team Calum Ferguson achieved what thousands of young footballers dream of when he played for his boyhood club, Inverness Caledonian Thistle, in the Scottish Premiership. Yet the 31-year-old looks back on his career as proof of a difficult truth about youth development in Scotland. Ferguson graduated from Caley Thistle's academy at 18 but played just two games for the first team before moving to lower league clubs and then to Canada and New Zealand to try to get top-flight football.

Now a development officer with Alba Football Alliance, he believes Scottish football continues to sell young players and their families the promise of a pathway from the academies to the first team, which for most will never be a reality. "Parents believe their boy, or their girl, will get to the first team – that they will be a star in football," he told BBC Scotland's Eorpa programme. "You just fall away from the game and your life changes overnight." Calum now works as a development officer trying to bring through new talent His comments come as Scottish football wrestles with