Scouting is an essential part of any sport. In its most basic sense, scouting refers to the process of identifying talent while keeping your team's needs in mind. Scouting has become increasingly significant in football, especially as the game’s dynamics are changing. Scouts have a HUGE role to play to ensure that they find the right player at the right age, and for the right formation.
As part of our Online Education Program for aspiring athletes and coaches, RFYS in partnership with AIFC conducted the first football webinar for the year 2022. In this webinar, we got Thangboi Singto, Assistant Coach & Technical Director at Indian Super League Club, Hyderabad FC to highlight the crucial elements of scouting, and the essential qualities and skills to discover upcoming talent.
While the main role of a scout is to discover and recruit bright talent for their respective organizations, there is so much more to it. Some teams rely significantly on scouts to perform day-to-day operations such as filing training reports, evaluating players, serving as the team's point of contact with the young talent's parents/guardians, and much more. Sometimes, scouts are also required to travel to discover promising talent from villages, schools, local playgrounds, and tournaments.
There are diverse skills that are required to be an excellent scout, such as:
- Tactical Awareness
- Excellent Observation Skills
- Outstanding Communication Skills
- Ability to Judge Character
Different places scouts work at:
- Local Leagues/Tournaments
- Schools/Colleges/Academies
- Training Sessions
- National/State Events
Scouts play a variety of roles. They assess potential prospects at times, while at other times they must provide an evaluation on an already developed player.
Qualities that every scout looks for in the player, such as:
- Technical Skills
- Awareness
- Attitude
- Communication Skills
- Bravery
- Size/Physicality
- Tackling
Thangboi exemplified the importance of time management in scouting and the proactiveness required to travel around different places looking for talents that could improve their team. The following points were covered:
- Some scouts look for different players.
- Some scouts look for different positions.
- The criteria set by the club of the scout has to be very specific in order to find the right player.
- Another important thing for the scouts to keep in mind is that the criteria will be different for different clubs as well as different coaches.
Having the right attitude is the key
He emphasized the fact that despite having all the qualities, having the right attitude towards practice, fellow professionals, coaches, the non-technical staff, teammates, etc. is of utmost importance.
Thangboi summarised the session and also suggested that the key takeaways from the webinar can be inculcated in scouts as well as in young players. The session came to an end by addressing queries & doubts in the final Q&A session.
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