The pursuit of wisdom in any walk of life quickly reveals that what you think you know is not nearly enough to get you to where you want to go. As I'm starting out in my football scouting journey I challenged myself to reach out to those already working in various roles in football to answer a short list of questions. My goal wasn't to get answers but relevant perspectives on the game within the game.
Here is Scoutxd.
How did your first opportunity in football come about?
My first real opportunity in football was a bit of freelance scouting for a club and it came about just from putting player profiles out on twitter and being noticed by people but I’m still looking for more opportunities.
What attracted you to scouting/analytics?
What attracted me to scouting was Football Manager I used to prefer the transfer windows and scouting players more than playing the games, then seeing the players that I’d scouted on the game doing well for teams in real life made me look at scouting further and got in touch with @elpivoteftbl who I’d followed and spoke about players and then learned about Wyscout and started this account.
Who/what is the first player/concept you "found"? What caught your eye?
I wouldn’t say I’ve found any players - yet. Purely due to me not starting this account long enough ago and it hasn’t even been a year since I started but there’s a few players I’ve tweeted about that a few people know about but I’m hoping they can do big things with their career and I’d have tweeted about early. But for me it’s not about ‘discovering’ players I tweet so that people are aware of players and I always want to learn about new players.
Who/what is the player/concept you "missed" on? What did you learn from it?
Using visuals in more of tweets to show stats, I think they offer an easy view of how the players doing and the people at
@insightMrkt do this very well and I’m trying to think of ways to differentiate a way to show stats on a visual that can be used in tweets.
If you could start over what skill would you build on first?
I’m still very early on with my journey so without sounding arrogant I don’t actually think there’s anything I would change but if you asked me this question in a year the answer would be different haha.
Do you see player development as more of an art or a science?
I don’t really think there’s a definitive answer to this question but for me it’s a combination of both as you need the right people around a player to aid their development and keep the player grounded but also the tools and resources or the player to develop.
For me it can’t be called a science as there’s no manual on how to develop a player as they’re human and all react and learn differently but on the other hand there’s people out there that have a talent in developing youth which could be called an art. But on the whole I don’t think it’s one or the other.
What is your favorite sports moment? Why?
My favourite sporting moment isn’t football related and is the cricket World Cup final last summer where Ben Stokes stepped up and won it for England.
What coach/player/team inspires you? Why?
Pep Guardiola - been a huge success everywhere he’s been and done so through new methods and ideas and his attention to detail is great shown in pep confidential.
What advice would you give to someone wanting to get into scouting/analytics?
Get yourself out there, ask for advice and help, admit when you’re wrong, know that you can’t know every player and be open minded about ones you don’t know, and find a niche.
What is your favorite app/tool to use (for work or fun)?
Wyscout got all the data and video available.
What other sport/hobby/discipline do you feel improves your work as an analyst/scout? Why?
Running allows me to think of new ideas and think about what I want to tweet about.
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