In modern football, scouting and recruitment processes can vary considerably from club to club. This can depend on various things, one obvious one being finances. A club in the 5th tier of England cannot afford the same recruitment department size as a club like Manchester City, and might have to resort to more “old-fashioned” methods of scouting. Some clubs, like Brentford, have actually purchased football statistics companies and use them in house to find potential signings through various metrics. So when talking about how a club approaches recruitment, I would like to speak more generally and not as specific to a certain type of club budget, so it applies to all clubs.

There are so many variables involved with player recruitment that it can be easy for a club to start off going down the wrong path and not realizing until they’ve committed to the players they identified. This is what I think a cohesive scouting procedure could look like.

Step 1: Clear Team Identity

The first step in successful recruitment should be having a very clear team identity. This involves having a clear style of play, generally coming from the manager, where different roles within the team system can be identified and specifically targeted. Some team systems are easier to recruit for than others, by having more similar player roles in the system. For example, to come up with an oversimplified tactic, a team could play a 4-4-2 where the fullbacks and wingers on each side have the same role within the system, and the two CB’s, two CM’s, and two ST’s also have the same role as their partner. So while there are still 11 places in the team to recruit for, there are only 5 roles within the system (excluding goalkeeper). Obviously most tactical systems are more complicated than that, and as a result it is even more important that the roles of each player in the system are clearly identified. The role of the player is different from the player’s position. Recruiting just based on position will lead to rolling the dice on every signing, as say, a right-back, can have several different sets of responsibilities in the team depending on the system. Once the roles required for the system are identified clearly, then the key metrics to look at for each role can be assessed.

Step 2: Prerequisites

For the scouting process to be efficient, the next step after establishing the team identity and system is to identify what attributes are required as a bare minimum to play for your club. This can be several things, one common example is player mentality. Different clubs might want different specific aspects to a players mentality, but in general most clubs are looking for a determined player who is motivated to improve, and has a good work rate. To use my club, Bodø/Glimt, as an example, their prerequisites are almost entirely mental. Kjetil Knutsen operates with a philosophy of focusing on daily improvements without a specific target or end goal, and is infamous for having very difficult training sessions. As a result, Knutsen cares a lot about how a player is performing in training at their current club, and how they performed in training at past clubs, which involves speaking with former coaches of the player. Since the Glimt training sessions are so demanding, Knutsen knows that if a player didn’t bring enough energy and work rate to training at their former club, there’s no way they will meet his training standards at Bodø/Glimt.

So depending on what your team identity is, your prerequisites will be different. It can be physical metrics (distance covered per game, sprints per game, etc.), technical ability (defenders need to be competent in building out from the back, players must be press-resistant, wingers need to have strong cross completion %, etc.), mental attributes (as discussed above), or any combination of the three. What’s important is identifying what attributes your team system needs the most (this can be role-specific prerequisites), so that any player who doesn’t meet the prerequisites can be quickly filtered out of the scope, and less time is wasted on players who likely won’t be a good fit for the team.

Step 3: Establish Scouting Metrics

This step is where the club needs to decide how they will go about identifying potential signings. Will the approach be more analytics-based, allowing more players to be identified in shorter periods of time, or more based on the “eye test”, which can offer a more complete view of a player at the cost of time? I personally think that if the club budget allows for analytics based scouting, the most efficient method is to use an analytics-based approach to filter out players who will not fit the team, before identifying a decent-sized list of players who could be good fits based on their play. Then, you send your scouts to go watch the individual players identified by the analytical step, to see if the eye test matches the numbers. Statistics can be very useful, but they never tell the whole story. A player might have incredible chance creation statistics, but if you never watch the player in a match, you might not notice that the team system they play in is set up to give this player the chance to make the final pass more often than any teammates. This might not be an issue for your club if you plan on using the player in a similar dominant role within your system, but if the role you are recruiting this player for doesn’t have the same share of the ball in the final third, then this player will likely not have as impressive numbers playing in your system. Similarly, a player with apparent poor statistics might be playing in a role that doesn’t suit them, or allow them to maximize their strengths. This is another reason why the specific metrics you wish to scout for are important to identify correctly, so potentially undervalued players are not ignored.

Just to give another example of what this might look like for a certain role, lets use a winger who plays as an inside forward. In this role, you generally want this player to be strong on the foot opposite to the side of the pitch they are on (a strong left-footed right winger, or vice versa). They need to be competent at getting past a full-back while cutting inside, have the ability to play a through ball from a central area or make a good run into the box. So to start, I would look at a map of where the player’s touches on the pitch, passes received, and passes made are located. Just looking at this can give you a very good idea of the types of positions this player generally finds themselves on the ball. Remember that this will be impacted by the team system they currently play in, a player could have all the attributes needed to be an inside forward, but is forced to play as a traditional winger in their current system.

Next, I would look at the player’s on the ball play. Not just # of passes attempted and completion rate, but the type of passes attempted. For an inside forward, we want this player to be attempting progressive forward passes and creating xA. When they receive the ball, do they look for an incisive pass, or more often just recycle possession? Does this player try to take on their man, and if so, how often are they successful? Does this player often lose the ball in possession?

After these two steps, you would have a shortlist of players who commonly take up the positions you want them to, have your preferred tendency to attempt dribbles, and are looking for the types of passes that your system requires from them. Since it is unlikely that a club can sign a “perfect player”, the attributes required for the most essential part of the role must be prioritized, with other attributes used to differentiate between multiple players who meet all prerequisites. It is always important to keep in mind during every step of the recruitment process what the specific player role you are recruiting for is, and what the most essential attributes to perform this role are. I also think that it is important to focus more on performance related metrics (xG/xA, types of runs made, types of passes attempted) than outcome related metrics (goals, assists). The outcome of the plays that a player makes are dependent on many variables which might not be relevant to your team. If a player is consistently creating good chances for their teammates, but the chances are not converted, you will miss out on a potentially impactful player if you only look at their assists numbers.

Step 4: Find Potential Players/Use Your Eyes

Once the recruitment team has established the team identity, the necessary prerequisite attributes for each role, and their prioritization of different metrics when scouting, a shortlist of players for the desired role can be developed. Here is where the more old fashioned scouting methods come back into play. Based on the shortlist developed using the priority of required metrics, scouts should be assigned to watch matches of the players on the shortlist. No player should be signed just based off analytics and watching them play, though. If possible, sending scouts to the matches in person could give them a chance to meet the player and start getting a sense for the human being that’s behind the “footballer”, which is a step that cannot be skipped in good conscience. A football team is like a family, and you need to assess how a potential signing might fit into your family and get along with others. If possible, watching a potential player in training is very helpful to evaluate how they might perform in your team’s training sessions. Now this step is implemented in every football club that scouts players, watching players is the most basic form of scouting. However, like I mentioned, a lot of precious time can be wasted if the proper players to go watch aren’t identified beforehand. This is why Steps 1-3 are so important if Step 4 is to be successful.

To summarize, at a bare minimum, football scouting must be more thought out than simply looking for a player that plays a certain position. In modern football, the players “position” (ST, CB, etc.) tells you very little about what that player is asked to do in a match. This is why the roles of the system must be clearly identified, knowing what each player is being asked to do in a match, so that the requirements to play that role can be identified. To avoid wasting time, clubs must set certain prerequisite standards in chosen metrics, that any potential signing must meet. Role-specific prerequisites are equally important. Once potential signings are filtered by the chosen prerequisites, then it is time to start watching these players live, to put their metrics/statistics in context with their team system and the league they play in. The club needs to know what kind of player they are scouting, not just the quantifiable statistics of what the player produced. Finally, a club must feel that they have a good sense of the person they are signing, and that their mentality/personality fits in with the rest of the team. If all of these boxes are checked before a signing is completed, then the likelihood of the signing being successful for the club will be much higher than otherwise.

For any questions or communication, feel free to email me at scouting.futbird@gmail.com

Thanks for reading,

-LM