A Mutual Attraction: Scotland’s Youth and Serie A
The two countries have always had a strong connection. There is a large Italian population in Scotland (estimated to be around 100,000 — but the actual number is likely to be larger than that). The cultural influence of Italy is felt throughout Scottish life, whether that be food, religion or some of the country's most well-known celebrities (singer Paolo Nutini and creator of The Thick of It & Veep, Armando Ianucci, come to mind).
That influence has also been seen on the football pitch. Some of Italy’s most famous footballers have graced the SPFL (or whatever it may have been called at the time). Gennaro Gattuso played for Rangers as a nineteen-year-old, Paulo Di Canio was SPL Player of the Year for Celtic in 1996/97, and who can forget Fabrizio Ravanelli’s — the man who scored in Juventus’ last Champions League final victory and Middlesborough legend — one year at Dundee?
This has been reciprocated the other way too — with three of Scotland’s greatest ever players plying their trade in Bel Paese. Scotland’s joint top scorer ever, Denis Law, played for Torino. Joe Jordan (famous to a younger generation for fighting with Gattuso while coaching at Spurs) played for AC Milan & Hellas Verona. While everyone’s favourite Sky Sports pundit Graeme Souness won the Coppa Italia while at Sampdoria.
Now there is a new trend — Serie A clubs are fishing in Scottish waters for the best young talent. In this piece, I’ll break down four journeys — some just beginning, one that has already come to an end and one ongoing — of Scottish talent in Italian football, exploring the motives for the moves and what makes the league so attractive for The Tartan Army’s young players.
Liam Henderson — The Trailblazer?
Livingston-born Liam Henderson was the first Scottish player to play in Italy’s top flight since Graeme Souness in 1986. His story is somewhat of an outlier in terms of Scottish talent moving to the country, yet he perhaps can be looked on as a reason why Italy has looked to Scotland for value-for-money signings.
He’s an outlier for two main reasons. The first is that he did not go directly into Italy’s top flight, and instead graced Serie B for two seasons before he made a Serie A appearance. The second is that he left Scotland due to a lack of game time and opportunity at his boyhood club Celtic, rather than the others in this piece who were all starters for their SPFL clubs.
What he has become though — is an example of the benefits of moving abroad, and to Italy in particular. Bari signed Henderson as a twenty-one-year-old for just £115,000 (an indication of how he was viewed at the time). His first season was a success on the pitch. He played nearly a thousand more minutes than he had in the past two seasons combined and had four goal contributions in total (two goals, two assists). Unfortunately, although Bari ended the season in seventh, they also filed for bankruptcy. This led to Henderson remaining in Serie B, but this time with Verona — despite strong links with a move back to Scotland.
From there he’s had ups and downs but has come out on top. Verona were promoted in his first season at the club — with Henderson scoring and assisting six goals in total. After starting this 2019/20 in Serie A, he was quickly loaned back to Serie B. A loan to Empoli that season was followed by a permanent move to Lecce — which lasted just one season. Empoli is now where Henderson calls home again.
2021/22 was his best year yet. Empoli defied expectations and flirted with a top-half finish for a lot of the season (they finished in fourteenth). Henderson — after flirting with the top flight with Verona — became a fully established starter in Serie A in his fifth season in Italy. He is a ‘cultured but competitive midfielder’ and came up with some excellent moments, like starting off a three-goal in ten minutes turnaround against Napoli back in April:
So what can we learn from Henderson’s Italian adventure? His is a journey of resilience and determination to do something different. It would have been easy for the Scottish midfielder to remain in his home country — more than likely at Hibernian, the club he won a Scottish Cup with. Yet instead he showed the value of challenging yourself outside of a comfort zone, something he had done before by spending a year at Rosenborg on loan. Henderson’s time in Italy has had obstacles and challenges. His first season went well then the club he was at went bankrupt. He then excelled at Verona in Serie B — a league of mismatches and misfits, with fallen giants and promising young players — but after helping them gain promotion he was sent back to the second tier.
Yet what he was always allowed was consistent game time. He has never played fewer than a thousand league minutes in Italian football. He has shown the value of patience and taking time to understand a new culture (both on and off the pitch). He has been vocal about how glad he is that he tested himself in further waters and the value that has given his career. There have been moments where he doubted himself — lockdown being one of his biggest challenges — yet he has been vindicated by his decision not to give in this season. Henderson may not (yet) be a Scottish international, but he has without doubt found a successful career. He didn’t intend to start something of a revolution, but he just might have.
Aaron Hickey — The Star
The second Scottish player to move to Italy was Aaron Hickey. If Liam Henderson moved to Serie B due to lack of game time in Scotland, Aaron Hickey is the opposite. He was (and still is) viewed as one of the best young talents the country has produced in recent times. Hickey made his debut for the Hearts first team at the age of seventeen. His first senior goal came against bitter rivals Hibs. And after one full season at Tynecastle, he had done enough to gain interest from Aston Villa, Olympique Lyonnais, Celtic and Bayern Munich.
Yet it was Bologna who won his signature, paying Hearts a fee of around £1.5m to secure the Glasgow-born full-back. Hickey answered questions about picking Bologna over Bayern by saying ‘I am sure that I have chosen a great club. Playing in Serie A is like landing on the moon. It’s amazing’.
It was reported that the decision to reject Bayern came down to the lack of minutes he thought he would receive — and in hindsight, he made the right decision. Despite winning Serie A seven times, Bologna is not a club with a whole load of expectations. They are a consistently mid-table side, finishing no lower than fifteenth and no higher than tenth in the last five years.
It has been the perfect place for Hickey’s development. He is an extremely versatile player (so versatile it often becomes a topic of debate), who has the unique skill of not having one foot weaker than the other. These sort of players are valuable but it can often lead them to be utilised wrongly or not find a home on the pitch, but that hasn’t been the case here. Hickey took time to get used to life in Northern Italy, no less because he moved during a worldwide pandemic, and had to deal with suffering from Covid-19 which led to a stop-start first season. He played just 758 Serie A minutes in his first season, didn’t register an assist or goal and received a sending-off, meaning he missed testing himself against Ronaldo, Dybala and co. in a game against Juventus.
Yet this didn’t dishearten the now twenty-year-old. He has been open about doing what’s best for his career — that he felt that playing consistently in the best and most competitive league available to him was always the best option. That’s exactly what Serie A and Bologna provided him. If the 2020/21 season was Hickey’s dress rehearsal, 2021/22 was his showcase piece. 2,820 minutes played (the third most of any player at the club), five goals and one assist later — Hickey has established himself as one of the brightest talents in football. Bologna have allowed him to make mistakes and learn from them, they’ve trusted in him despite his young age and they’ve reaped the benefits — making an incredible profit as they sell him to Brentford for £18m this summer.
Hickey has reaped the rewards too. On the pitch, he has become a much more refined and well-rounded footballer (who, no doubt, still has a long way to go), the minutes and trust he was allowed meant he started Scotland’s crucial World Cup Play-off game against Ukraine at the end of the season — despite never playing at under-21 level. Off the pitch, he has moved away from friends and family, matured and grown as a person, and attempted to learn a whole new language.
While it may have only been two years in Italy — it has been an invaluable experience. Hickey could have taken the money early on, or made the natural move to Celtic (a club he spent four years at). Instead, he tested himself in new surroundings, because he wanted to be in the best situation for his development. That’s what Bologna and Serie A gave him. The league often gets tagged as a league where the older you are the more you thrive, and that is unfair. It’s a place where young talent is allowed time and trust to grow — no matter the nationality. Scottish players are being picked up by these clubs because they are overlooked and undervalued, and Serie A clubs have to get creative with their recruitment as the league struggles against the spending power of the Premier League.
The Future
Hickey may have left for the Premier League, but there are now more Scottish players than ever in Serie A. Lewis Ferguson has moved to Hickey’s former club Bologna from Aberdeen at the age of twenty-two and Josh Doig has moved to Hellas Verona from Hibs at the age of twenty.
Ferguson is a talented central midfielder who has already made a handful of appearances for the Scottish national team. Despite rumours of moving to one of Scotland’s big two or the tried and tested move to a top-end Championship team/lower Premier League team, he has opted for Italy. Bologna have signed him for around £3.5m (according to transfermarkt). There he will be allowed the time to grow as a footballer, at a team that has groomed exciting talents such as Svanberg in recent times.
Doig is one of the Scottish full-back production lines and is viewed as a long-term successor and option to Andy Robertson and Kieran Tierney. He has moved for a fee of around £3.25m and will be playing in Verona — one of the most interesting and fun teams in Italy of the past few years. Like Bologna, Verona have assisted in the development of some great talents in recent times — such as exciting central defender Matteo Lovato. It is another club that allows younger players a chance to grow, make mistakes and learn from them with just enough pressure to keep them motivated.
Both of these moves — while different — have things in common. They are both fairly cheap for their age and talent, but with high upside. For the clubs, they offer the opportunity for undervalued talent to develop in an extremely high-quality and competitive environment. It’s a low-risk, high-reward strategy for the clubs. If the move goes well then they will more than likely exceed well beyond even doubling their profits, or are gaining a valuable player long-term. If it doesn’t, then the outlay is small enough that the risk was worth it, and if losses needed to be cut then it doesn’t cripple the club financially. It’s no coincidence that Scotland is a shopping ground for these clubs, the country is developing good players who just need an opportunity while Serie A clubs need to become creative with their recruitment, looking for low-cost solutions and opportunities. That’s exactly what the Scottish market offers them.
For the players it offers exactly what Hickey said it did — it offers them the opportunity of consistent playing time at the highest level possible. Serie A is one of the top four leagues in world football, it is a growing league in quality and exposure. It also helps that it takes place in one of the world’s most beautiful countries, a country with incredible weather, food, coffee and views. The lower to midtable clubs in the country are massive, with incredibly passionate fanbases, but they are also places with lower-pressure environments that can allow young players to thrive in. Serie A is ideal for these young Scottish talents (bar maybe the sunshine mixing with pasty Scottish skin) to grow and develop, against legendary clubs like Juventus, the Milan clubs, Napoli and Roma. It may be looked at as a marriage of convenience (undervalued talent and clubs with lower budgets), but it is also one that works. So far the evidence suggests that it benefits the player and club. Let’s hope that it also benefits the Scottish national team too.
