“I once travelled from Greece to Denmark to scout a goalkeeper. I went straight from the airport to the stadium, only for him to face zero shots. After away fans rioted, the match was abandoned, and the police had to intervene. My phone battery died, and I only made it to my hotel late at night, just in time for four hours of sleep before flying back. Despite the chaos, that game still provided valuable insights: I saw first-hand how much the home fans adored the player and observed his leadership and quality, even if all his shot-stopping happened in the warm-up.”
Here, then, is the life of those involved in one of the most misunderstood aspects of the game. Their stories reveal a side of football that rarely makes headlines – one of adaptability, forbearance, and sometimes, outright audacity.
Misconceptions about the role of a scout remain widespread. “I’ve never played it but I think many believe the job’s like Football Manager: you just go to watch games, pick multimillion pound players, and enjoy the travelling and nice hotels,” said one scout. “When people think about South America, they imagine scouts swanning around the continent, sweating in hot, dingy stadiums and sending reports,” said another. “The reality is that hundreds of European clubs are aware of the same players having watched hours of video and studied mountains of data. Those that get the credit are simply more proactive, but that’s down to structure rather than player identification.”
Many believe scouts have a crystal ball when it comes to identifying which players are destined to succeed. A scout working at grassroots level lamented that “there is [a belief that] a blueprint for finding talent [exists]and that if you work for the top teams, you will get it right every time. [But] mistakes happen. We are expected to make predictions on players that, in reality, we don’t know enough about.
“When scouting across lower age groups, parents assume scouts have all the information when this is simply not true. I would often go to games with nothing more than a name and, if I was lucky, their position. The first half of every under-18 game I attended was spent working out who was who.”
The shift toward data-driven scouting, combined with the greater use of video scouts, has transformed talent identification. Those with university degrees are edging out those with field experience. Yet this growing reliance on technology remains contentious. A scout at one of the Premier League’s biggest clubs said: “This method is now well-established but it has massive limitations. I was at a match when I saw a player do something that was spectacularly difficult. There was a swirling wind and he brought down a high ball to hit a wonderful pass. I was really excited about watching this later on video but from the angle it was filmed, it failed to capture the brilliance. It was an unbelievably high-quality first-touch pass, but you couldn’t tell that it was incredibly windy.”
“It’s moments like these that you’re looking for,” he added. “A 15-year-old diamond that can do something different, but it just didn’t look as good on video. It’s the same at, say, a match in Quito [in Ecuador]. If a video analyst has never experienced what it’s like operating at altitude they are simply not qualified to do a meaningful report. It took it out of me just walking to the stadium.”
A scout’s unique insights remain vital. Despite the efforts of clubs to measure every aspect of the game, unpredictability and randomness endure. Above all, football is a business driven by raw emotions. “I loved being a modern gladiator,” proclaimed the former Germany international Thomas Müller after his final outing for Bayern Munich. These human elements will never disappear, though the number of scouts involved will likely be streamlined even further, and the role might be reduced to confirming what the stats appear to indicate.
WhatsApp groups are full of yarns of the “one who got away” and talent “spotted in a park” driving back from a match. One of my favourite anecdotes comes from a scout in Australia: “I go early to games and do some research at a local watering hole. As it happened, the player I was meant to be watching turned up at the bar. I asked him why he wasn’t playing and he said he had taken a knock in training. He then had a curry and a few beers before heading off. Later, I was in the stands, and the footballer ran out with the team and was the man-of-the-match, scoring the winning goal. I did my report but I kept quiet about the two pints and biryani. He turned pro and had a long career, which still blows me away.”
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Another cash-strapped, starry-eyed hopeful at the beginning of his scouting journey was so anxious to impress a big German club that he put himself in considerable danger. “I started as a youth-team analyst at a small club in Brazil and was on peanuts – around £50 per week,” he recounts. “As a 21-year-old I was desperate to show the Germans what I could do. I was so poor I couldn’t afford hotels for the late, midweek games or rent a car for the long-distance matches. The German club wouldn’t pay expenses, but I had a plan. I’d go in my everyday clothes, but in my backpack I had a Gaviões da Fiel shirt – the hardcore Corinthians supporters group, people you don’t mess with.
“After the game I put on the shirt and found a supporters’ bus going near my home, which meant a few hours singing and drinking with them. Another time, I went both ways on a Palmeiras ultras’ bus. I wore a Palmeiras top but the Corinthians shirt was still in the backpack. The two fan groups are huge rivals and I was fortunate that no one looked in my bag. If they had done, I’d have been in serious trouble. It was very risky, but I was prepared to do anything to become a scout.”
Technology’s rapid development promises a future where machine learning and AI revolutionise talent identification, making scouting more data-driven than ever. Some of the book’s contributors embrace these innovations. Many others mourn the potential loss of old-fashioned eagle-eyed spotters.
This is an edited extract from Scouts’ Stories: A Life in the Shadows, by Jon Cotterill
