Scouting efficiency
Sometimes you read an article or listen to a podcast, and there are a few lines in it that really make you think.
Yesterday morning I continued working my way through (which makes it sound like hard work, it isn't they are great) the This Football Life podcasts. They are a series of interviews with people working in football, in analytics, coaching, player development and more. If you are reading this blog you will love them.
The one that has caused me to think is the interview with Tommy Johnson. The former Celtic and Aston Villa striker.
I don't want this piece to read like a personal attack on Tommy, that isn't my intention at all.
Tommy has worked as a scout and head of recruitment at clubs such as Blackburn, Cardiff and Watford. He is open and engaging and generous with the detail he goes in to. He has clearly worked hard, putting in the hours and miles to scout players all around the globe.
What I do want to highlight is the massive inefficiency in the process as he describes it.
Who are the best talent spotters?
Throughout the interview, Tommy makes it clear he thinks scouting should be the domain of former professional players. His rationale is that players are players because they are better at understanding football and see things that outsiders wouldn't see.
I certainly accept the argument that the average former pro would see and understand the game better than the average football fan. But, come on, Arrigo Sacci, Arsene Wenger, Jose Mourinho, I could go on and on and on. The interview contains so many examples of "gate keeping" where Tommy describes the importance of networks of former teammates tipping each other off on jobs. He gets a Head of European Scouting job at Cardiff after a call from an old teammate saying they can't fill the job and did he want to give it a go.
Clearly, in an interview like this, you are going to get the odd fact wrong (Craig Short would not have known Shane Duffy from his time playing at Everton, he left 10 years before Duffy arrived) or not put yourself across clearly (there are bits where he seems pleased to have picked out Rakitic as a good player from watching him at Sevilla when he already had Basel, Schalke and 30 caps for Croatia behind him) so I'll give him the benefit of doubt on that.
There were a few other bits I'll be less than generous with though. For example, when talking about signing Gary Medel he said the decision to scout him as a potential recruit was because an analyst at Cardiff was into South American football and recommended him. It is clear they regarded him as an unknown and put a lot of due diligence into scouting him. But for goodness sake it was Gary Medel, he had 3 seasons at Seville, a year or two at Boca Juniors and had been a key part of the Chile national team for years at that point.
It is clear we aren't dealing with player identification obsessives who know of every up and coming player around the world.
Even if it takes an expert "who knows the game" to judge a player surely at the stage of drawing up a list of potential targets you get the football obsessives involved to let you know who they've spotted.
The scouting process
Where to start with this section?! If I accept Tommy's argument that ex-players know more about talent spotting than anyone else I hope he would accept my argument that someone like me, with 15 years or so experience in making processes more efficient knows more about organising a business.
And scouting is effectively a talent identification and recruitment business.
On several occasions, he describes just going to games and seeing who catches your eye as being the main part of scouting. He'd go over to Spain and try and catch 3 or 4 games over a weekend, he describes going to a Real Madrid vs Athletico game. With all due respect to the clubs he has worked at who could he have been scouting there?!
He was amazed that at a club he worked at they didn't have a dedicated coach traveling around the south of England watching games.
The phrase "wanting to find that golden nugget" is used to describe the hopes of stumbling across that player nobody else knows. The Jamie Vardy playing in the non-league.
We all love the story about the prospector digging around in the dirt who discovers that nugget of gold and makes his fortune.
But it ignores the fact that most of the gold reserves are identified by scientists using technology to find areas likely to produce gold, securing the mineral rights and efficiently mining the rich seams.
In the time you've traveled to a Madrid and back to watch a weekend of football another can have received data from every game in Europe, watched every clip from their wider target list and watched the full 90 minutes of players they have actively targeted.
Full live games are a necessary part of scouting, just like digging is a necessary part of finding nuggets. But whilst you can dig random holes, and might strike it lucky, it is better to do all your research and take lots of soil samples before you reach for the spade.
How I'd organise it
Two streams of scouting:
Youth scouting:
In-person scouting of tournaments, youth, and underage football mainly focussed on local, domestic market where no video exists.
Pro scouting:
Decide on focus (no point scouting whole world)
Data scout to narrow lists
Video scouting to further refine list
Due diligence on refined list
In person scouting for final check
Nobody should be flying to another country without a clear idea of who they are watching.
Yesterday morning I continued working my way through (which makes it sound like hard work, it isn't they are great) the This Football Life podcasts. They are a series of interviews with people working in football, in analytics, coaching, player development and more. If you are reading this blog you will love them.
The one that has caused me to think is the interview with Tommy Johnson. The former Celtic and Aston Villa striker.
I don't want this piece to read like a personal attack on Tommy, that isn't my intention at all.
Tommy has worked as a scout and head of recruitment at clubs such as Blackburn, Cardiff and Watford. He is open and engaging and generous with the detail he goes in to. He has clearly worked hard, putting in the hours and miles to scout players all around the globe.
What I do want to highlight is the massive inefficiency in the process as he describes it.
Who are the best talent spotters?
Throughout the interview, Tommy makes it clear he thinks scouting should be the domain of former professional players. His rationale is that players are players because they are better at understanding football and see things that outsiders wouldn't see.
I certainly accept the argument that the average former pro would see and understand the game better than the average football fan. But, come on, Arrigo Sacci, Arsene Wenger, Jose Mourinho, I could go on and on and on. The interview contains so many examples of "gate keeping" where Tommy describes the importance of networks of former teammates tipping each other off on jobs. He gets a Head of European Scouting job at Cardiff after a call from an old teammate saying they can't fill the job and did he want to give it a go.
Clearly, in an interview like this, you are going to get the odd fact wrong (Craig Short would not have known Shane Duffy from his time playing at Everton, he left 10 years before Duffy arrived) or not put yourself across clearly (there are bits where he seems pleased to have picked out Rakitic as a good player from watching him at Sevilla when he already had Basel, Schalke and 30 caps for Croatia behind him) so I'll give him the benefit of doubt on that.
There were a few other bits I'll be less than generous with though. For example, when talking about signing Gary Medel he said the decision to scout him as a potential recruit was because an analyst at Cardiff was into South American football and recommended him. It is clear they regarded him as an unknown and put a lot of due diligence into scouting him. But for goodness sake it was Gary Medel, he had 3 seasons at Seville, a year or two at Boca Juniors and had been a key part of the Chile national team for years at that point.
It is clear we aren't dealing with player identification obsessives who know of every up and coming player around the world.
Even if it takes an expert "who knows the game" to judge a player surely at the stage of drawing up a list of potential targets you get the football obsessives involved to let you know who they've spotted.
The scouting process
Where to start with this section?! If I accept Tommy's argument that ex-players know more about talent spotting than anyone else I hope he would accept my argument that someone like me, with 15 years or so experience in making processes more efficient knows more about organising a business.
And scouting is effectively a talent identification and recruitment business.
On several occasions, he describes just going to games and seeing who catches your eye as being the main part of scouting. He'd go over to Spain and try and catch 3 or 4 games over a weekend, he describes going to a Real Madrid vs Athletico game. With all due respect to the clubs he has worked at who could he have been scouting there?!
He was amazed that at a club he worked at they didn't have a dedicated coach traveling around the south of England watching games.
The phrase "wanting to find that golden nugget" is used to describe the hopes of stumbling across that player nobody else knows. The Jamie Vardy playing in the non-league.
We all love the story about the prospector digging around in the dirt who discovers that nugget of gold and makes his fortune.
But it ignores the fact that most of the gold reserves are identified by scientists using technology to find areas likely to produce gold, securing the mineral rights and efficiently mining the rich seams.
In the time you've traveled to a Madrid and back to watch a weekend of football another can have received data from every game in Europe, watched every clip from their wider target list and watched the full 90 minutes of players they have actively targeted.
Full live games are a necessary part of scouting, just like digging is a necessary part of finding nuggets. But whilst you can dig random holes, and might strike it lucky, it is better to do all your research and take lots of soil samples before you reach for the spade.
How I'd organise it
Two streams of scouting:
Youth scouting:
In-person scouting of tournaments, youth, and underage football mainly focussed on local, domestic market where no video exists.
Pro scouting:
Decide on focus (no point scouting whole world)
Data scout to narrow lists
Video scouting to further refine list
Due diligence on refined list
In person scouting for final check
Nobody should be flying to another country without a clear idea of who they are watching.
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