Robbie Ure's Rise: A Missed Opportunity for Scottish Football
Robbie Ure was 18 when he first felt the roar of Ibrox for real. League Cup, Queen of the South, August 2022. One start, one goal, a glimpse of what might come next.
Nothing much did.
He was handed two more appearances that season – one minute against St Mirren in November, one minute against Hibs in May. Two tiny cameos, six months apart, barely enough time to break sweat, never mind build a career.
For a teenager desperate to play, it was starvation rations. Rangers were struggling on multiple fronts, yet the door to the first team stayed bolted. The club’s response to their problems in Ure’s position was not to promote from within, but to spend.
Danilo arrived for £6m, his total cost already nudging £10m once wages are counted. Sam Lammers cost £3.5m and climbed past £4m when salary is added. The message to a young striker watching on was unmistakable. Rangers were buying answers, not growing them.
So Ure left. No fanfare, no fee. Off to Anderlecht, then on to IK Sirius in Sweden. Out of sight, apparently out of mind.
He didn’t vanish. He grew.
Now 22, he has turned into exactly the kind of forward Rangers once hoped they might produce. Fifteen goals in 15 games for Sirius, 10 in his last six. A hot streak, yes, but more than that – a body of work that has lit up the Swedish top flight and lit up scouting reports across Europe.
On Sunday, word emerged that Sevilla want him. A fee close to £8m is being discussed.
The same day, Rangers lost 2-1 at home to Hibs.
You can imagine the mood. A former academy striker, allowed to walk away for nothing, is suddenly the subject of a multi-million-pound move to one of Spain’s most decorated clubs. The contrast with the misfiring, expensive imports at Ibrox could hardly be sharper.
For the Scottish FA, the timing is almost too on the nose.
Next month, in St Andrews, they will host a “critically important” forum for the owners and chief executives of Scotland’s senior clubs. The event is titled “Made In Scotland?” and it will be fronted by SFA chief executive Ian Maxwell and his chief football officer, Craig Mulholland.
Strip away the branding and you’re left with a simple plea: trust your own. Build proper pathways. Play your young Scottish players.
If they were inclined to twist the knife – they won’t be, at least not publicly – Maxwell and Mulholland could stand up, put Robbie Ure’s face on a big screen and ask one brutal question: how much money have you burned by ignoring players like this?
Invest in them, play them, sell them. Save a fortune, then make one.
Of course, football is never as simple as a single parable. Ure now is not necessarily Ure then. Players develop at different speeds. There is hindsight at work here, and Rangers are not alone in their regrets.
Celtic know the feeling. Ben Doak, now Gannon-Doak, barely featured in their first team before heading to England and blossoming into another multi-million-pound asset. Another one that slipped through Scottish fingers.
The bigger picture hardly needs statistical backing, but the numbers from the opening two Premiership rounds underline the scale of the problem.
Only 31% of the players used so far have been Scottish. Just 5% have been Scots aged 21 or under. Forty-six different nationalities have already appeared in the league.
The most startling case? Dundee United, who have used just one Scottish player – Dylan Tait – across their first two matches.
Ask any chairman, chief executive or manager whether they want homegrown players in their first team and the answer is always yes. Of course they do. They talk about identity, connection, pride in their own.
Then the caveats arrive. Pressure. Budgets. Relegation fears. European ambitions. The excuses stack up, some understandable, others flimsier.
There are nuances. Dundee United will point to their investment in youth and the reality of losing a gifted 16-year-old like Kai Hutchison to Everton. They are not alone in seeing their best teenagers head south.
Celtic have lost Dara Jikiemi to Liverpool and Daniel Cummings to West Ham. Rangers have seen Cameron Scott go to Burnley and Chris Eadie to Sheffield United. Hearts have waved goodbye to Boyd Fraser to Nottingham Forest and Keir McMeekin to Manchester City. Hibs have watched Ben Vickery and Josh Landers join Manchester City and West Ham respectively.
Those are just some of the names. There are many more.
Money plays its part. It always does. But the easy explanation – that it’s all about wages – suits clubs a little too well. Young players and their parents look at the pathway in Scotland and often see a dead end. They don’t see meaningful first-team chances. They see benches and B teams.
The poster boys are thin on the ground at the top end of the Scottish game. Too often, pathways are blocked by a steady flow of short-term signings from overseas, players with patchy CVs and limited upside. For a talented 18-year-old, the choice can look stark: stay and stall, or leave and gamble.
That is the mindset Maxwell and Mulholland must try to shift in St Andrews.
They will have an audience. Whether they have a truly receptive one is another matter. Appeals to national pride and the long-term health of the Scotland team will only go so far in a room full of people whose primary duty is to their own clubs and their own balance sheets.
Plenty of teams lower down the pyramid already commit fully to playing their youngsters. They live it every week. At the top level, self-interest will decide the argument.
So the SFA duo must frame youth not as a patriotic obligation, but as a business model. Show that fielding academy players is not charity, but strategy.
They have tried before.
In August 2024, the Scottish FA published its Transition report – 114 pages compiled by then chief football officer Andy Gould and former head of men’s elite football strategy Chris Docherty. It was dense with global data, case studies and interviews. It challenged the old clichés about the dangers of trusting kids and laid out, in black and white, the football and financial logic of playing them.
It highlighted the huge transfer windfalls reaped by European clubs who nurture, expose and then sell their academy products. It contrasted that with the meagre minutes handed to Scottish youngsters at home. It demolished the old mantra that “kids win you nothing” and replaced it with hard evidence.
The message was blunt: giving more game time to young Scots benefits everyone.
Some recommendations were adopted. The central thrust – be bold – was not.
Another report followed in October 2025, this time 133 pages, again authored by Gould and Docherty. Another strong piece of work. Another set of ideas. Neither man works at Hampden now. You suspect too many collisions with too many brick walls.
And so here we are again, heading for another summit, another attempt to move the dial.
Next month, as club owners and chief executives sit in a room in St Andrews, they will be a short walk from the Old Course’s infamous Road Hole bunker. Golfers have seen their dreams buried in that sand. Getting out of it cleanly can feel impossible.
For Maxwell and Mulholland, persuading Scotland’s biggest clubs to truly back their own youngsters might be an even trickier escape.
But as Sevilla circle a former Rangers academy striker and the money on the table creeps towards £8m, one question will hang in the air over St Andrews:
How many more Robbie Ures can Scottish football afford to lose?
