Robbie Ure's Journey: From Rangers Academy to European Stardom
Robbie Ure was supposed to be one for tomorrow. Rangers barely gave him a today.
He arrived at Ibrox as an 18-year-old academy striker and announced himself in the most straightforward way a forward can: with a goal on debut, in a League Cup tie against Queen of the South in August 2022. That night felt like a beginning.
It turned out to be an illusion.
Across the rest of that season, Ure’s Premiership “career” amounted to two cameos so brief they barely registered – a single minute against St Mirren in November, another minute against Hibs in May. Two appearances, two minutes, six months apart. A pathway, in name only.
Rangers, struggling on multiple fronts at the time, still saw little room for a teenager up front. Instead, they went shopping.
They spent £6m on Danilo, with the overall outlay, including wages, pushing towards £10m. They paid £3.5m for Sam Lammers, more than £4m once his salary is factored in. The message to a hungry young striker was unmistakable: the club would rather pay for ready-made answers than wait for a homegrown one to grow.
So Ure went. First to Anderlecht in Belgium, then to IK Sirius in Sweden. Out of sight, out of mind.
Not any more.
At Sirius, Ure has done what so many Scottish youngsters are asked to do abroad: grow up quickly. He’s now 22 and in the kind of form that lights up scouting databases across Europe – 15 goals in 15 games, 10 of them in his last six. On Sunday, word filtered through that Sevilla, serial European campaigners and serial talent traders, want him for close to £8m.
On the same day, Rangers lost 2-1 at home to Hibs.
It’s hard to script a more uncomfortable contrast. A support simmering after a home defeat, and a story breaking about a former academy striker they allowed to leave for nothing, now being courted in a multi-million-pound deal by one of Spain’s most storied clubs. It stings.
And it’s not just a Rangers problem. It’s a Scottish problem.
A summit, a sore point and a familiar warning
If Sevilla do get their man, the deal will be another quiet piece of evidence for the Scottish FA when they gather the country’s powerbrokers in St Andrews next month.
The forum has been billed as “critically important”. The title of the presentation – “Made In Scotland?” – carries its own challenge. SFA chief executive Ian Maxwell and chief football officer Craig Mulholland will stand in front of owners and chief executives from across the senior game and ask a simple, awkward question: where are your own players?
They won’t say it out loud, but they could easily put Ure’s face on a slide. Here is what happens when you don’t trust your pathway. Here is what you spend, and what you lose.
If Rangers had backed their academy striker earlier, they might have saved themselves millions in transfer fees and wages. They might have developed an asset they could later sell for a fortune. That’s the theory, at least.
Reality is always messier. Ure might not have been ready then. Maybe the player we’re seeing now in Sweden only emerged because he left. There is hindsight at work here, no question.
But the pattern is familiar, and painful. Celtic barely used a young Ben Doak – now Gannon-Doak – before he went to Liverpool. Another multi-million-pound talent who slipped away before he had a chance to properly arrive.
Numbers that should alarm everyone
You don’t need spreadsheets to know Scotland has a problem with youth pathways. The opening two rounds of the Premiership underline it anyway.
Across those first two weekends, only 31% of the players who saw any action were Scottish. Just 5% were Scots aged 21 or under. Forty-six different nationalities were represented in the top flight.
One club stands out. Dundee United have used just one Scottish player – Dylan Tait – in their two league games so far. One.
Ask chairmen, chief executives and managers whether they want academy graduates in their first team and they will all say yes. They’ll talk about identity, connection, pride. Then come the explanations for why so few make it through: pressure, budgets, risk, expectations, the need for “experience”. Some reasons hold up. Others are convenient cover.
There are nuances. Dundee United will point to the investment in their youth system, and then to the sight of their promising 16-year-old, Kai Hutchison, heading to Everton. He is one of dozens of Scottish teenagers who have gone south in the post-Brexit market.
Celtic can list Dara Jikiemi (Liverpool) and Daniel Cummings (West Ham). Rangers have lost Cameron Scott (Burnley) and Chris Eadie (Sheffield United). Hearts have seen Boyd Fraser (Nottingham Forest) and Keir McMeekin (Man City) depart. Hibs can mention Ben Vickery (Man City) and Josh Landers (West Ham).
Those names barely scratch the surface. The traffic is steady, and mostly one way.
Money matters, of course. English clubs offer bigger wages, better facilities, a different level of competition. But to pin it all on finance is too easy. Avarice is one thing. Lack of opportunity is another.
Players and their parents look at the landscape in Scotland and see very little in front of them. Very few academy graduates playing every week. Very few poster boys to show that staying put can still work.
Blocked paths and familiar excuses
At too many of Scotland’s biggest clubs, the pathway is clogged. Not by elite imports, but by journeymen. By short-term fixes. By players whose CVs, if we’re honest, would not terrify any ambitious teenager.
What does a 17-year-old forward think when his club signs yet another fringe striker from a mid-table league with a patchy scoring record? Stay and stagnate, or leave and hope?
This is the culture Maxwell and Mulholland are walking into at St Andrews. They’ll have the room. Will they have the room’s attention?
Appealing to national pride won’t be enough. The owners and executives listening have one overriding duty: to their own clubs. If that means a team stacked with homegrown players, fine. Many sides lower down the pyramid are fully committed to that route and are reaping the benefits in identity and, increasingly, in transfer fees.
But if others believe the answer lies in recruiting from every corner of the globe, they’ll keep doing it. Their obligation, as they see it, is to results, balance sheets and shareholder expectations.
So if you’re asking Scotland’s biggest clubs to give more minutes to their kids, you’d better be armed with more than sentiment. You need hard evidence that youth development is not just morally right or nationally useful, but financially and competitively smart.
Reports, data and deaf ears
The SFA has already done the homework.
In August 2024, it published the Transition report, a 114-page study led by then chief football officer Andy Gould and former head of men’s elite football strategy Chris Docherty. It was heavy on data, rich in case studies, and unapologetic in its message: be brave with your young players.
The report dismantled the old maxim that “kids win you nothing”. It showed how clubs across Europe have built fortunes and competitive teams by trusting academy graduates, giving them senior minutes and then selling at the right time. It compared the paltry number of minutes given to Scottish academy players with those in other successful leagues and nations. The gap was embarrassing.
The logic was laid out in black and white: playing more young Scots is good for performance, good for finances and good for the national team. The document didn’t whisper; it roared.
Some recommendations were adopted. The central thrust – be bold – was not.
By October 2025, the SFA tried again. Another report, 133 pages this time, again authored by Gould and Docherty. Again, strong ideas, sharp analysis, clear direction.
Both men have since left Hampden. Too many collisions with too many brick walls, you suspect.
And so here we are again. Another summit. Another attempt to change minds that, so far, have proved stubbornly resistant.
St Andrews, sand traps and the hardest sell in Scottish football
Next month, in a room overlooking the famous Road Hole at St Andrews, Maxwell and Mulholland will take another swing at this.
Just outside their window sits the Road Hole bunker on the 17th of the Old Course, a trap that has wrecked the dreams of some of the best golfers on the planet. Escaping from that sand can feel impossible.
Convincing a room full of club owners and chief executives to rethink how they treat their own youngsters might be even harder.
The task is clear: show them that the next Robbie Ure is not a cost, but an opportunity. That the next Ben Doak is not a flight risk to be reluctantly cashed in, but a potential cornerstone of a team and a balance sheet. That the game they run today will be judged tomorrow by how many of its best players were actually made in Scotland, not just imported for a season and forgotten.
The numbers are damning. The examples are everywhere. The evidence is on their desks.
The question, as always, is whether anybody in that room is truly ready to listen – and act – before the next one gets away.
