To most football fans scouting is an abstract idea. Scouts are invisible figures in club coats, obscured somewhere in the stands. For many, myself included, knowledge of scouting goes no further than Football Manager.
With a couple of clicks a scout is sent halfway around the world, one time lapse later and you have all the information you would ever want. It all sounds simple, but it doesn’t sound real. Scouting plays an integral role in the success of football clubs at all levels, so how does it really work?
In order to get some answers I needed to talk to a real football scout, and I was lucky enough to sit down with Matt Hodges (QPR and West Ham) to hear about the realities of the job.
First and foremost, I wanted to find out about how one becomes a scout. For Matt it first came as a means of following a passion rather than launching a career. Having drifted away from the game for the best part of a decade, the footballing itch reared its head in his 30s.
Through an uncle of a friend Matt heard about an opportunity at Southend United, and from there life as a scout began. This led to a 3.5 year spell at West Ham, before a relocation took him to the south-west where he currently works regionally for QPR.
In essence, you need to be on the lookout if you want to work in scouting. There is not necessarily an abundance of work if you’re not an ex-professional, and you have to be committed to working your way up the ladder.
Once you become a scout there is plenty of scope in terms of what you might end up working on. We spoke at length about the Late Developers Project that QPR are currently running. The idea here is looking at Steps 1-4 of Non-League to find players aged 16-19 who might have slipped through the system.
The reality is that semi-pro football has plenty of talent in its ranks, you just have to go out and find it. This is an area where scouting plays a role of high importance, teams are looking for young players who can make the jump to playing adult football. The best way of determining this is to rely on scouting.
Given this level of importance, I wanted to hear more about what skills a scout needs to make sure they can do their job effectively. One that Matt highlighted is determination. The reality of scouting in English football is you are spending several days a week in the freezing cold, often enduring the pouring rain to do your job.
The work requires people who are willing to be persistent. This goes beyond going and watching football, and extends to how you handle the other side of the job, presenting your findings. Football is a world with big characters, so it is crucial that you can form your own opinions and back them. A scout has to be able to explain to a head of recruitment just why they back a certain player. You need a healthy amount of self-belief.
One way you can develop this skill is by putting in the work when it comes to learning as much as you can about your own club. Go and watch training sessions, find out just what the squad looks like.
If you put a lot of effort into scouting a player just to realise that the club already has several options in that position you’ve created a lot of extra work for yourself. Do your due diligence and you won’t regret it.
Having heard about what makes for a good scout, conversation turned to what makes for good scouting. As you may expect, it comes down to a process. You identify your targets through a tickbox exercise, then it comes down scouting players of interest multiple times.
With each watch you can pick up different things, with the first watch being important for establishing a first impression. You get to see how they react to a range of situations. For example you see how they react to losing the ball, to a game where they struggle to get a touch.
The reality though is that scouting is not restricted to what happens on the pitch. For young players especially it’s important to hear about how they are outside of games. Coaches, schools, parents, all can offer unique insight into what a player is made of.
The secret ingredient to being a good scout? Earwigging. The more games you go to the more you realise how much can be picked up just from listening to what people are saying around you. At non-league level it’s not unusual to be stood near families of players, keep your ears ready and you might learn something very important.
Where non-league stands out is the extent to which it provides a true test for young players. For many players fresh out of an academy this is their first exposure to adult football. The difference is profound, with a higher level of physicality being just one thing that can create a great shock for a youngster.
Scouts have plenty to consider to decide which players are capable of making the jump. Off the pitch it comes back to how players conduct themselves. For many it is the first time in their life they have to live independently and look after themselves. With this you can see players slip into overindulgence.
One example that scouts are interested in hearing is how much a player goes out. If a scout keeps hearing that a player is out drinking several times a week it can create major concerns about the level of professionalism they hold themselves to.
On the pitch it comes down to consistency. A player has to show that they can handle the frequent collisions that come on the pitch, essentially proving they are not to be bullied. On top of that, they need to show assuredness. A healthy touch of arrogance might not be the worst thing for players. The reality is that making it to professional football is a cutthroat world. Failure is commonplace, you need to wholeheartedly believe that this is where you belong.
Of course, this can all differ from club to club. Scouting goes beyond just one universally agreed method. The truth is that it depends on factors such as budget and general club policy.
If you take Premier League clubs like Manchester City and Chelsea, the reality is that they are scouting everywhere. The reasoning is simple, if you can afford to it makes plenty of sense to scour for talent as much as you can. Where it gets even more interesting is the extent to which clubs are changing the way they approach recruitment, Matt told me about two different trends.
The first is the role played by agents in modern football. Some clubs prefer to handle recruitment directly through agents, asking them for information and footage of the player in question. This cuts out the use of scouting, but is also a very different dynamic. An agent is in essence making a sales pitch for their player.
The other is the advanced use of statistics and data to inform scouting. Instead of sending a scout and building from there, a team like Burnley use stat reports to establish players of interest then send a scout as a secondary step.
The overall approach depends on the philosophy of the club and more specifically what role they view scouting as having in the bigger picture. One of the things that drew Matt to QPR was the fact that they view scouting as a means to bring in young players who will be given plenty of chances. As a scout it is naturally more fulfilling if your work leads to a player becoming an important part of the team.
To finish, I asked if there was anything that people might not expect about scouting. The answer I got was the loneliness of the job. In one week you can end up travelling all over the country, ending the night in a hotel room far away from home.
You have spent the evening watching football by yourself, freezing to death hoping to find a diamond. When this is done you get home late, upon when you have to write up your match report. As a job it can be solitary, and it requires you to really want to do it. Hard work is non-negotiable, and you might not last long if you are not deadly serious about wanting to pursue it.
On top of that, it might just change the way you watch football. When football becomes work it gets harder to use it as a way to switch off, even seeing football on TV can cause thoughts of work to start creeping in.
With that being said, it was so clear how much Matt loves what he does. Speaking to him you could see the passion for football shining through. It takes a lot to be a scout, and you could easily see that this was someone with exactly what the job demands.
