‘I just thought I’ve never seen a young boy like this in my life’: The scout who found an eight-year-old Billy Gilmour
https://theathletic.com/2641052/2021/06/11/billy-gilmour-rangers-Chelsea-euro-2020/
Scott Bryson knew he had seen enough but he couldn’t help but watch every kick on a Saturday morning in 2009.
After so many years scouting the top talent in Ayrshire for Kilmarnock and by this point Rangers, however, he was determined to disguise his presence and not draw attention to the diminutive figure in the yellow jersey of TASS Thistle, who seemed to own every blade of grass on a seven-a-side pitch at Ardeer Recreational Park.
He wanted to keep this talent a secret so he moved to the 11-a-side game taking place further along, adjacent to the four smaller games in the background.
What was happening immediately in front of him became a blur. His eyes were fixed on this one boy in the distance.
Unsure if he was the only scout in attendance, his new position was simply a ruse to throw others off the scent such as Jim Began, his good friend and Celtic counterpart, who has been scouring the same places for decades. He had every reason to be paranoid.
“It was like a magnet,” he says.
“I tend to walk about and look at all the games but that day something just kept drawing my head back to him. There was just something about him that looked like he had been playing the game for years. He had a great appetite and was always looking to be involved.
“Sometimes you get a gut feeling for somebody. You just can’t describe it. I just thought, ‘I’ve never seen a young boy like this in my life’.”
Bryson makes a list of every team at every age group in the area and over the course of the season works his way through every team so he has peace of mind that he has cast his net so wide no team or talent can escape unnoticed.
The pitfall of doing it alphabetically, though, is that TASS is towards the end of the queue.
“You were just hoping there was no one else watching him,” he says. “Some boys you might go back to watch two or three times but with Billy you didn’t need another look. That’s the way he had me.
“When you see someone you like you look to the parents to see if they are talking to anyone in particular. I spoke to the TASS coach at the end of the game as you get to know them.
“The wee boy there?”, I said.
“Billy Gilmour,” he said.
“He’s terrific, I’ve never seen an appetitive like that in a young boy”.
Bryson has built a reputation as possessing a great eye given he has identified boys who went on to play in the Rangers first team including Ross McCrorie, Robby McCrorie, Tom Walsh, Rory Loy and Jamie Ness, while he also advised Rangers to pinch Barrie McKay from Kilmarnock as a teenager.
There are others who have made a career elsewhere like Matthew Kennedy, Greg Kiltie and Ross Stewart but he is quick to stress that no one gets every recommendation right. Gilmour was outstanding as an eight-year-old that day but Bryson only takes three or four boys to Rangers each year due to how exceptional they need to be.
“It’s like trying to have a crystal ball to imagine what these boys are going to be like in the future but he looks just the same. It sounds funny but you watch a boy playing and you try to imagine him playing in a Rangers shirt to see whether he is going to fit.
Scott Bryson with Gilmour at a game in Kilwinning in 2017 after he had signed for Chelsea.
“I’ve never taken someone in with the same enthusiasm for the game of football. It was colossal.
“Boys will say they want to be a football player when they grow up. Billy said that too but he really did want to be a football player.”
Bryson was so excited by what he had seen that he took Gilmour and his parents, Billy and Carrie, to the training ground that day to show them around. “His mum enjoyed it as she’s a Rangers fan but his dad is a Celtic fan,” he says, laughing.
Gilmour was training and playing for Rangers but, as he was too young to sign a contract, he was free to explore other interested clubs. He played with Celtic too for a period but after working under Jimmy McNee, who was head of the children’s academy, he chose Rangers.
“I’ll always be thankful I went to Ardeer that day,” says Bryson. “I’ll probably never have another player like that.”
Gilmour was tipped for stardom from an early age but it is very rarely a smooth ascent all the way to the top. A serious knee injury aside in July 2020 aside, which kept him out for six months, that is exactly what his career has been like so far though.
He turns 20 today and put in a terrific 30-minute cameo against Luxembourg last week after making his international debut in Scotland’s 2-2 draw with Holland.
Steve Clarke is facing growing calls to start him in the heart of midfield on Monday when they start their Euro 2020 campaign against Czech Republic. It would mark another big milestone in a career that has so far been defined by making the step up before his time.
He played for Rangers under-21s at 15, made his Scotland under-17 debut in the same year, his under-19 debut the year later and, to show just how his unique talent has expediated his rise, his under-21 debut came six months before that at just 17.
In that age group the older Premiership-hardened players in Lewis Ferguson and Allan Campbell would acquiesce the playmaking responsibilities to Gilmour, who still looked like a boy but controlled the game like a veteran.
Since joining Chelsea in 2017 he has continued to progress and defy the doubters who thought he may stall but the eight years he spent at Rangers before that is what shaped him and in that time he made an impression on every coach and team-mate who witnessed his rise.
Harry Cochrane grew up playing with Gilmour in midfield for the best part of five years before he found his game time limited and moved to Hearts at under-13 level.
“He’s always been the best. Technically, at every age group, he was up there,” he says.
“The one thing I remember is that he never loses the ball. No one knows how he does it. He just has it in the right place that they can’t take it off him.
“He’s wee but he can jump so high. He had a mental spring that meant he could beat centre-halves to the ball.
“Everyone just knew he was unbelievable and even he sort of knew it too. He used to walk with confidence but not in a bad way. It can make a difference when you play with that belief.
“We played at the Mundialito tournament. We beat Real Madrid 4-0 and he scored an overhead kick. I’ve got it on DVD. He was the best player on the park and we were just better than them.”
Gilmour with the European Cup (Photo: Darren Walsh/Chelsea FC via Getty Images)
Gilmour was part of the 2001 group which also contained fellow Scotland debutant Nathan Patterson, who has enjoyed a spectacular last six months since thriving in Steven Gerrard’s side in the second half of the season.
They were an outstanding side who were used to winning by big margins most weeks before the gaps narrowed as they get older but with Gilmour, his profile got bigger once he starred in the Milk Cup and the Victory Shield.
Ricky Waddell, who is now head coach at Lowland League side Caledonian Braves, coached him for 18 months and found himself being conscious of the need to ensure he was testing Gilmour with his sessions, such was his ability.
“With big players they always have one big attribute and Billy’s was his awareness and the second was his passing,” Waddell says. “Put him under pressure, he’s got the tools and the awareness to get out of it easily but he was never a dribbler.
“He played like he does now, just controlling the game and finding space, playing like he has a camera attached to his head that he can see the whole pitch.
“He had that star quality then and not many do. (David) Turnbull did when I was at Motherwell. They just don’t let anything faze them.”
As much as Gilmour’s technical qualities and ability to dictate play is what makes him such an exciting prospect, it is his attitude that all of his coaches return to.
He may be small in stature but that has never been the case when it comes to his combativeness on the pitch or imposing his personality, as Waddell remembers.
“One boy came in who was, let’s say, a bit of a rogue,” he says.
“He tried to have a bit of a go as I think he was a bit jealous of Billy and his stature within the club. Billy is a good kid and wasn’t big-headed but this lad came in and tried to bring him down a peg or two and was niggling away at training.
“Billy got on with it but the next morning I was told Billy pulled the boy up in the changing room and put him in his place to say that wasn’t on. It showed a bit of character and that he was no shrinking violet.”
In terms of just how outstanding he was during these years, several scouts cite Barry Ferguson in the 1990s as the last Scottish youth player to be head and shoulders above his team-mates and opposition the way Gilmour was.
Craig Mulholland, who is now head of academy at Rangers, saw Gilmour across his entire spell at the club and says it was at around 11 and 12 that Gilmour’s name started to come up every week in meetings.
By 13 and 14 it was clear he was performing at an exceptional level and that is when the enduring memory of the midfielder is from: doing extra fitness work early in the morning and after dinner time, speaking to analysts about clips from his games and asking questions.
“We made the decision to allow him to train with the first team at 15 and play with the development squad but you were allowed overage players at that point so it was more like a reserve team,” says Mulholland.
“Because of his physique it was a question of, ‘Is it safe for him to go and play?’, but I remember the night he played against Dundee in a game that James McPake (now Dundee manager) was just returning from injury in.
“Watching this wee slight lad you were thinking, ‘Are we doing the right thing here?’, but he just took to it. He could handle the ball and he could handle himself. A lot of that probably comes from watching his dad playing juniors in Ayrshire and being around dressing rooms — if you speak to Billy Snr now he always says he’s still the best footballer in the house!
“The following game when he played up against Hibs it looked like a boy was going to come in high on him but Billy just dealt with it before he came in and he ended up being sent off. While we would never encourage that, it showed his competitive spirit.
Gilmour playing for Rangers against Celtic in the Scottish Youth Cup in 2017 (Photo: Ian MacNicol/Getty Images)
“You could see he could receive the ball, you could see his release skills, you could see he could scan, he simplified his game against the older players to make it a lot of one touch stuff and around the corner stuff as he had that awareness.
“He also wasn’t shy if someone gave him a whack or a thud. He got a few vs Dundee but he just bounced back up. I’m sure he was probably sore but he was determined to say, ‘Nah, I’m going to get back up and play again’. It’s one of his strengths but also testament to the staff throughout the programme that he had those attributes to handle it.”
Gilmour started training with the first team at Rangers during Mark Warburton’s spell as manager. He had a background in youth development having set up the NextGen series and had implemented a heavy possession-based style of play at the club.
“He would lose it and make mistakes but he had that desire to get it back quickly and try it again,” says Mulholland. “At that point in our academy journey that was quite a cultural shift as one of our key principles was that we need to allow the kids the space to make those mistakes, otherwise they’ll never try it again. Billy went and tried loads of things and made a million mistakes but what we should be proud of is that we gave him that environment to undertake that learning.”
“One of the key things we spoke to Billy about, and any young player, is that there is research from the European Club Association and the Belgium FA that says moving to a different country before 18 is significantly detrimental to your ability to play in a top league. That was a study of 1,700 players so what we are encouraging young Scottish players to do is stay with their parent club until then and then move.
“When you look at all those statistics and the number of boys who move, the fact that he has bucked that trend and become the outlier against definite research is testament to the uniqueness he has.”
Rangers had several meetings with Gilmour and his parents in an attempt to keep him but when Chelsea put forward their case he chose to go to the London club.
“You work closely with the boy and the parents and a number of clubs. If there is a point when you think the boy is no longer going to remain at the club what you need to do is get the best commercial deal for Rangers. At that point, you then speak to other clubs.
“The deal we got was a significant number at the time and has some more significant add-ons after that, which are a positive for Rangers. It has a really good sell-on so every time he does well with Chelsea or makes his debut for Scotland, for example, there is a further return for Rangers which justifies the investment in the academy.
“It’s not part of the business model we ever want as we want to retain our best talent and get them to the first team as there is even more value there but in every academy in the world we will always have players leave as part of player trading.”
When it came to leaving he once again proved to Peter MacDonald, his coach at the time, that he had an elite mentality that he had never come across before.
“He knew he was the best but he had earned the right to think that by how he backed it up.
“It was the last day of the season and he hadn’t signed but it was fitness testing time. He probably knew he was likely to be leaving and therefore didn’t have to smash it but the type of character that he is, he went and won it.”
