Contents
What is soccer scouting?
Scouting is a Anglicism, comes from the word scout which means explorer. Extrapolated to the world of football, we can take her as someone who explores the plays and the players. This is a definition that we have to be clear about in order to dedicate ourselves to scouting.
And the scout?
He is the person who watches football matches with the aim of identifying talent, whether they are young players or not, who can be incorporated into the team for which he works. It could even happen that he was a person outside the club he is watching, freelance or belonging to a company, but linked to the world of football. He has to have a special talent and an ability to predict the future adaptation and evolution of a player within the club. He must be able to keep emotional aside and rationally make decisions that suit the needs of the club.
In addition, at times, it requires a great capacity for concentration, observing only a certain player, forgetting the power of attraction that the ball has. It is as important to know how a player behaves without the ball as with it. It shows in both their ability to sign and attract talent to grassroots football.
Before this task was done in person, but today there are countless tools that allow us to do this type of analysis online and from the comfort of our office.
What future does scouting have?
As society and technology evolve new possibilities and horizons on which to work are emerging.
It is truly a world to be exploited, where wisdom and creativity they have carte blanche to act on everything that is observable, quantifiable and qualifyable.
If today we review the football clubs, we will see how the analytics service is made up of 2-4 people with different functions. Each professional is in their tasks and responsibilities, organizing their needs week after week. The important and interesting thing about this work is not to obtain volume, but quality.
Before, decisions about players, efficiency and match plans were based solely on the experience and opinion of a professional, however, today, we can support all this with an objective, solid, proven and quality basis thanks to the analysis real.
The fundamental function of anyone dedicated to scouting is to dissect and isolate a player or a team in order to analyze their behavior within a game, to be able to detect their weak points and transmit this report to the coach so that he can work on these weak points.
What characteristics are the most valuable to dedicate yourself to the world of scouting?
An innate gift is useless without a solid knowledge base, so we must take into account several characteristics, but it is nothing that cannot be worked on. Let's get down to business... What will help you the most when you dedicate yourself to scouting?
To start and most important of all: He knows football in depth and from all angles in a tactical, technical, conditional, psychological, social, etc. way.
Second point: Get to know your team, what your squad is, how they get along with each other and what game model they normally follow.
In third place: Be an entrepreneur. Have your experience and technological resources at hand so that you can collect and order any detail of what happens in the field, but above all, have the ability to correctly analyze this information you have collected, In this way, when making the report for the directors, coaches and players, it will be clear to them where the error is and it will be possible to work properly.
Fourth point, linked to the previous point: The communicative ability is also essential.
Before finishing, we would like to highlight a phrase from Joseph Guardiola, who said "The secret of a good team is in order, that everyone knows what to do."
