I spent over an hour in Burley's company last Thursday morning and he got more animated on one subject than on any other. It had nothing to do with the betrayal of Boyd or the stick he's been getting in the press. He shifted forward in his seat when he started talking about the raw deal young aspiring footballers get in this country. We're talking school children here. Nine years old and up. The gist of his message is that we're failing them and it's about time we did something about it.

Something is being done, by the SFA, but it's not enough, not nearly enough. Let him explain: "We've just played Argentina," he says. "In Argentina kids still play football in the parks. We don't do that any more here. Thirty years ago we did. Twenty years ago we did. Not now. I was out in the park every day, morning and evening. My mum brought me in for my dinner, my dad brought me in for my bed, seven days a week. Never stopped." Burley points out that in many European countries nowadays the most promising footballers at school get out to play in early afternoon, four afternoons a week. They get extra training and that's from nine years old. "You're talking about eight or 10 sessions of training a week. Now, we don't play at schools in Scotland. They'll play with boys clubs at the weekend, they might play ball a few evenings a week maybe. For me, that's not enough. We've started a scheme in the SFA, 9-12 year-olds getting extra periods of football. It's good but it's not enough. We need to widen it. In Scandinavia they had a survey of these kids and they actually did better academically. They reckon they were sharper and brighter and fitter because of the exercise. It's hard to change the way we do things in Scotland but we must, we absolutely must."

Scotland likes to think of itself as a football country because of its rich history and because fifty and sixty thousand people turn up at Parkhead and Ibrox every other Saturday and because the Old Firm and the Tartan Army will follow their teams to the ends of the earth. Fair enough, but on the question of facilities for youngsters Scotland is a backwater. Things as basic as football pitches are in scandalously short supply here. Now, Jack McConnell used to turn up at all the big events when he was running the show at Holyrood and if there was a heroic Commonwealth Games athlete or, better still, a proud Olympian to greet at the airport then Jack was always on hand. Alex Salmond has stepped up that effort. Alex is always there for the finer things in our sporting life. For the nitty gritty, the grassroots, he's not at the races. He wants Scotland to compete as an independent country but offers nothing when asked how he intends to pay for the facilities in order to make his dream come true.

The SNP are poor on sport. Their heads are in the clouds. Salmond's big statement so far has been to shout out loud about the shame of Scotland's international games not being available on terrestrial television. OK, they should be. But is that it? A piece of populist grandstanding? Nothing to say about pitches and lending opportunity to the youth? Maybe the SNP are doing outstanding work and it's just all been hushed up. Then again, maybe not.

Salmond could do with listening to Burley. He knows a thing or two about nurturing young footballers. In his years in England he oversaw the development of Gareth Bale, Tom Huddlestone, Richard Wright, Jamie Scowcroft, Darren Bent and Kieron Dyer among others. That lot were subsequently sold on for transfer fees totalling £60m. "Our clubs can't go and buy the best players," says the Scotland manager. "They can't compete on finance, no chance. The only way to do it is bring through your own players. They're all doing it, all working hard at it. But other things need to be done. If you're not getting the basics by 16-years-old it's so hard to change. I went to Ipswich at 16 and played against George Best at 17. Scandinavian facilities for their kids are fantastic, miles better. How can we change it? We need to get these children time on the pitch.

"Is this a football country? Yes, the passion and the hunger to play, absolutely. But as far as developing our young kids we're a million miles off the pace. England are a long way off as well. Two evenings a week and a game on the weekend? Well, you'll get some players through but you'll miss plenty. Kids need to be playing virtually every day. If I'm a young golfer or a young tennis player, I'm playing every day, aren't I? At it all the time? This is something that we as an association are really trying to tackle but as a country as a whole we need to think about it."

Did Andy Murray get where he is today by occasional visits to the tennis court? Did Chris Hoy become great by spinning around the velodrome from time to time. No. There's merit in what Burley says. But is anybody in government listening?

Sporting history deserves an audience

TERRIFIC series on the history of Scotland running on the BBC at present. Outstanding, truly outstanding. Important, too.

I'm not Scottish, so much of it is news to me. But I get the impression from Scots that some of it is news to them, too. So if this is the era of discovery, can we try and expand it to sport?

I've always felt that the golf pioneers of the late 1800s and early 1900s were pretty much forgotten in their homeland.

These are the guys who brought the game to America and who are revered there. But not here.

Tommy Armour, Bobby Cruickshank, the Macdonald brothers, the Maidens, the Campbells, the Ross boys, the Andersons and dozens more besides.

Their stories are among the great odysseys in the history of sport, not just Scottish sport.

In these gloomy times, their triumphs over all kinds of adversity would make for inspirational viewing.

Old Firm are living on a knife edge

THE Old Firm operate on tight margins in European competition, rarely more than a bounce of the ball separating them from success and failure. The post-mortem following Celtic's defeat at the hands of Aalborg on Tuesday night has focused on declining standards in Scotland but does that argument stand up to scrutiny? The Old Firm are being judged by their past results, which is unfair. Many of those were achieved on the back of blood and guts and opportunism and not a little luck. Most of them could have been lost just as easily as won. AC Milan, Manchester United, Spartak Moscow, Werder Bremen, Fiorentina, Sporting Lisbon. All of them turned on the smallest things. So it was on Tuesday night. A tight game was lost just as other tight games have been won. Andy Gray said that Celtic and Rangers shouldn't lose to Aalborg and Kaunas. The fact is that Celtic and Rangers have shown that, just as they can beat illustrious opponents, they can also lose to lesser ones. Their fate is permanently on the edge of a knife.