MALKY Mackay, the SFA Performance Director, yesterday expressed hope that Shelley Kerr, who has been appointed Scotland’s women’s coach, will serve as an inspiration to a generation of promising youngsters.
Kerr, who became the first woman to take charge of a men’s team in British senior football when she was appointed manager of Stirling University back in 2014, will take over from Anna Signeul after the Euro 2017 finals this summer.
Mackay, who succeeded Brian McClair as performance director in December, has been charged with resurrecting the fortunes of our national game and has been outspoken about “baller” culture since taking up his new role.
He believes that Kerr, who was stopped from playing football at school and worked on a production line in a factory as a young woman, is the perfect example of the heights that can be reached if kids apply themselves properly.
“There has to be an inner desire to get over adversity in their lives because everyone has adversity in their lives,” said Mackay. “The ones who come through it take it on, others chuck it.
“Shelley worked in a factory, went away and had a baby, came back and won over 50 caps. She overcame adversity to become the first women’s coach in the men’s game to now becoming the national team manager.
“My job is to highlight people like her and say : ‘There’s the national manager - who started work in a factory’.”
Meanwhile, Mackay has defended the controversial comments he made about the “neediness of social media-obsessed” kids last month and stressed that educating boys and girls as young as 11 about nutrition will be key to halting the decline of our national game.
The former Watford and Cardiff City manager believes the sport in this country has to fight against “genetics and our national diet of pie suppers” in order to improve the number and standard of player we produce in the future.
He said: “My focus is to try and produce enough players that Gordon (Scotland manager Strachan) and Shelley don’t turn around and ask: ‘Is that all I’ve got?’ We’ve got to educate them. All the way along, it goes hand in glove. How do we get our kids at 11 to become full international footballers like Shelley?
“Shelley talks about football as her passion since eight and I was the same at Queens Park when I played and had a job as well. As parents you can’t let them off the hook. You have to start the education process.
“My job is to offer help to the clubs in any way that I can in terms of coaching and in the sports science, medical, psychology, diet and nutrition side of it as well.”
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