Celtic’s Zion Pullan has numbers to die for. But what does it mean?

Forty-eight hours ago, I could not have told you that Celtic Academy player Zion Pullan even existed. It was a name that would have meant absolutely nothing to me.

Yet here he is, in and around the Under-15 and Under-17 teams, and suddenly everyone I know in Celticland is talking about this kid. None of us, or at least no one I’ve spoken to yet, has seen him play. None of us knows all that much about him, other than his numbers.

Those numbers seem insane.

Can a kid in our Under-15 and Under-17 setup really have racked up 93 goal contributions? That is goals scored and goals assisted over the course of the season so far. Ninety-three. How many goals? 58 of them.

It does not sound credible. That number does not sound real.

So, of course, I had to check it out.

Of course, it is real.

The news that he is being scouted by a La Liga club does not sound terribly surprising either. Naturally, the doom-scrollers are already telling us that we are going to miss out on a superstar. You know what? Maybe we are.

This kid did not turn 15 all that long ago. At that level, your body is still developing. Your brain is still undergoing all sorts of radical transformations in terms of how it processes information. Your hormones are firing on all cylinders.

At that age, if you are a little bit more mature physically than your peers, if you are a little bit quicker, a little bit sharper, a little bit more composed, then you will stand out a mile among your age group.

I am not going to tell you those numbers are common. They really are not. But nor are they completely freakish in the way some people might assume.

Chido Obi-Martin, the young Danish striker who was at Arsenal and is now at Manchester United, was exactly this kind of prodigy. He was in the Arsenal Under-18 team at 15. He scored a hat-trick on his debut and was called up to the Under-21 team while still only 15.

A few years ago, he made headlines when, playing in an Under-16s game, he scored ten goals against Liverpool’s academy team. Then, in April 2024, he scored eight in one game for Arsenal’s Under-18s, which took his scoring record at that level to 24 goals in just seven matches.

These guys are out there.

Shay Reid, the Irish youth player who went to Preston in August last year and who was, for a time, linked with Celtic, scored 51 goals at academy level in one season. That was part of the reason why clubs were out there trying to sign him.

But there is an obvious reason why these stories stand out.

These guys are playing at a level far above what their age and experience would suggest. They are almost supernaturally gifted among their peer group. But that is the crucial thing to remember: among their peer group.

It does not mean they are all ready to step into the first-team squad.

All the same, if we are dragging our feet and we do not offer this kid a proper plan, then it is entirely possible he goes somewhere else and blows the doors off the building. Those are extraordinary numbers, no matter how you dress them up. No matter what context you try to build around them, there is obviously talent there.

Quite possibly, there is a very big talent there.

But we should not get carried away, because there is context here too. How much better are Celtic’s Under-15s and Under-17s than the teams around them? What is the quality of the opposition he is playing against? What unique physical characteristics does he already have, even at that early age, that set him apart from his peers?

Those same physical characteristics will almost certainly not be enough to suddenly throw him in at Kilmarnock on a wet Wednesday night, which is not to say this is a player we can afford to ignore.

Numbers like this can exaggerate talent, but they cannot lie completely. Within his peer group, he clearly stands out a country mile. He is obviously far, far better than a lot of the players around him, and that is notable.

That is what scouts look for. That is what coaches want to see in their young players.

This is why Spain is calling him up. That is why La Liga clubs are sniffing around.

You also have to remember that this is the age where all the temptations outside football, and inside it, start to rear their heads. It takes people of extraordinary discipline to withstand that.

The fact that there are so few elite footballers, despite so many people playing the game and so many kids trying to make it, tells you that it is not just about skill.

Skill is not enough.

Islam Feruz is the object lesson in that. Feruz had all the skill in the world. What he did not have was the discipline to make it as a professional at the level his ability once suggested he might reach.

This is the time when a youth player really has to keep it together. This is when he has to dedicate himself completely to the highest professional standards. He has to be as good as he can be, go as far as he can go, and maximise every bit of his potential.

That means working harder than the people around him, pushing himself more than the people around him, and being the best professional he can be.

If this kid has all of those traits, then yes, he might find himself on the cusp of the first team sooner than we think.

But this is not the time for scaring ourselves with the idea that he already has one foot out the door. There is no proof that this is true. Even if it were true, it is not something we need to panic about.

Nor should we be sanguine about the prospect, as though losing a kid this good would mean nothing.

You do not want to rush these guys, but you do not want to hold them back either. He is clearly way better than the level he is playing at. If we had an Under-21 league in this country worth a damn, you might see him shine there.

To throw him into the Lowland League would just be to waste him.

We definitely need to do better at every level as a club. If we sit this kid down with his parents and his people, and we tell them there is a plan for him, then we have a chance.

Spell that plan out. Tell him where he will be in six months and then again in twelve. Tell him when the professional contract comes and what the pathway looks like. Assure him that first-team football is in his future if he continues to develop, continues to work, and continues to justify the excitement.

Then whatever talent he has, we will find out about it soon enough. Otherwise, we will find out when he starts scoring goals for some other club.

There is, of course, another possibility. This is why we have to be careful.

He might become just another name. Just another guy who seemed to have enormous promise and faded out of all knowledge.

Just another one who never quite got there. Another one who never quite made it. Another one where no one can quite work out why it never happened.

The answers to that are as numerous as they are complex. Not everyone makes it. In fact, almost nobody does.

So whilst I am not dismissing this outright, I am not going to get overly excited either. Not yet.

But at some point, Celtic have to start graduating talents of this calibre a lot quicker. They also need somewhere to graduate to, and right now that is the biggest obstacle to progress at Celtic and every other club in Scotland.

The system is a joke.

That is on the lack of leadership at the top of the game. As long as that leadership is not there, we will continue to tie ourselves in knots with questions like this one.

Youth football numbers can lie. But they do not usually lie that loudly. This kid is definitely one for the watching.

Choose The CelticBlog as a ‘Preferred Source’ on Google News for quick access to the news you value.