Robbie Ure's Journey: From Rangers to Potential Stardom

Robbie Ure was meant to be one for tomorrow. Rangers barely gave him a today.

He arrived in the first team at 18, a sharp finish in a League Cup tie against Queen of the South in August 2022 hinting at something more than just another academy cameo. That night felt like a beginning. It turned out to be a footnote.

Across the rest of that season, the teenage striker saw one minute against St Mirren in November and one minute against Hibs in May. Two Premiership appearances, two minutes, six months apart. That was his Rangers story.

For a young forward desperate to play, that was starvation rations. And this at a time when Rangers were struggling across competitions, searching for answers, searching for goals, yet never really looking in his direction.

Instead, the club looked elsewhere – and paid heavily for the privilege. Around £6m on Danilo, closer to £10m once wages are factored in. Another £3.5m on Sam Lammers, north of £4m all told. The pathway from academy to first team was not just blocked; it was buried under transfer fees and salary bills.

So Ure went. First to Anderlecht in Belgium, then on to IK Sirius in Sweden. Out of sight, but as it turns out, not out of mind.

Because in Sweden, something clicked.

Now 22, Ure has grown into his frame and his role. Fifteen goals in 15 games, 10 of them in his last six. Those are not “promising youngster” numbers. Those are “who is this kid and how much is he going to cost?” numbers. On Sunday, word emerged that Sevilla are ready to test that question with a bid close to £8m.

On the same day, Rangers lost 2-1 at home to Hibs. It was not hard to imagine the mood around Ibrox darkening a shade further as the story broke. A former academy striker, allowed to leave for nothing, now being lined up for a multi-million pound move to one of Spain’s most decorated clubs. The kind of deal Scottish clubs dream of landing. Except this one will play out elsewhere.

For the Scottish FA, though, Ure’s rise is more than a painful anecdote for Rangers. It is ammunition.

Next month, in St Andrews, the SFA will host what they are calling a “critically important” forum with the owners and chief executives of the country’s senior clubs. The presentation, titled “Made In Scotland?”, will be fronted by chief executive Ian Maxwell and chief football officer Craig Mulholland. The message is simple enough: trust your own.

If diplomacy allowed, Ure’s story would be front and centre on their slides. Trust the pathway, save yourself millions in transfer fees, then make millions again when you sell. The logic is brutal and obvious.

Football, of course, is rarely that neat. Ure at 18 was not the Ure of 22. Not every late bloomer is a missed opportunity; some are just late bloomers. There is a measure of hindsight in turning his journey into a morality tale.

But the sting remains. Just as Celtic felt it with Ben Doak – now Gannon-Doak – barely seen in the first team before heading to England and blossoming into another multi-million pound asset that slipped through Scottish fingers.

The numbers from the start of this Premiership season underline why the SFA feels compelled to push the issue again.

Across the opening two rounds of fixtures, only 31% of the players who took part were Scottish. Just 5% were Scots aged 21 or under. Forty-six different nationalities appeared in the top flight. One of the league’s biggest clubs, Dundee United, have used just a single Scottish player – Dylan Tait – across their first two games.

Ask any chairman, chief executive or manager if they want homegrown players in their first team and the answer is always yes. They talk about identity, connection, community. Then the explanations begin. Pressure. Risk. Relegation fears. European ambitions. Some reasons are valid, some less so, but the outcome is the same: pathways blocked, minutes scarce.

There are complications. Dundee United, for instance, will point to the investment in their academy and the frustration of seeing a gifted 16-year-old like Kai Hutchison tempted to Everton. They are far from alone.

Celtic have lost Dara Jikiemi to Liverpool and Daniel Cummings to West Ham. Rangers have watched Cameron Scott go to Burnley and Chris Eadie to Sheffield United. Hearts have seen Boyd Fraser join Nottingham Forest and Keir McMeekin head to Manchester City. Hibs can point to Ben Vickery at City and Josh Landers at West Ham.

Those are just a handful of names from a long and growing list. Post-Brexit, the route south for Scottish teenagers has only widened. Bigger wages matter, of course, but money is not the only driver. Ambition needs a runway.

Parents and players look at the domestic landscape and struggle to see a clear path to first-team football. They see squads padded out with overseas signings whose CVs are, at best, unremarkable. They see the same short-term decisions repeated season after season. Stay and wait? Or go and gamble?

For too many, Scotland feels like a cul-de-sac, not a pathway.

Maxwell and Mulholland now have to walk into a room in St Andrews and convince hardened football operators to change course. They will talk about national interest, about feeding more players to the Scotland team, about the health of the domestic game.

But they know what really matters in that room. Every owner, every chief executive, every manager is paid to look after one thing: their own club. Their own league position. Their own balance sheet.

Plenty of clubs lower down the pyramid already lean heavily on youth and do it with conviction. They see development as survival and identity, not a luxury. Others, particularly at the top end, behave like serial shoppers. If they believe the answer to their problems lies in the next import from a far-flung league, they will keep buying.

So the SFA’s pitch cannot be about romance. It has to be about return on investment.

They tried to make that case before. In August 2024, the SFA’s Transition report landed – 114 pages of data, case studies and hard truths, put together by then chief football officer Andy Gould and head of men’s elite football strategy Chris Docherty. It dismantled old myths about the dangers of playing kids, showed the financial upside of trusting them, and laid bare how few minutes Scottish academy graduates were getting compared with their peers in more successful football nations.

The message was blunt: giving young Scots real game time is not an act of charity. It is smart football and smart business.

Some of the report’s recommendations were taken on board. The central challenge – be bold – largely was not.

A second document followed in October 2025, this time 133 pages. Gould and Docherty again. More analysis, more ideas, more examples of clubs across Europe turning academy minutes into transfer windfalls and on-field success. Both men have since left Hampden. You suspect the brick walls they kept running into left a mark.

Now comes another push. Another attempt to change habits that have hardened over years.

Next month, as Maxwell and Mulholland step into that room in St Andrews, the famous Road Hole bunker on the Old Course will sit just outside the window. Golfers have seen dreams die in that sand trap. Escaping it can feel impossible.

Compared to shifting the mindset of Scotland’s biggest clubs on youth development, getting up and down from that bunker might feel like the easy shot.