Thousands of hours in Football Manager and the thrill of work: 15 answers from the scout of the First League club

Nikolai Babkin from Akron talks about selection and how they become scouts.

Scouting is rarely talked about in Russian football. However, this is a very important area of ​​work, on which the future of the club on the football field depends. At the same time, there is practically no information on the Internet about what scouts do and how to become one – experts in this field do not risk sharing knowledge.

Correcting the situation: Nikolai Babkin , our scout analyst, answers fifteen questions about scouting. Of course, we will not reveal secrets – but we promise that it will be interesting. True, let’s make a reservation right away that a professional scout will not discover much new for himself here: we want to talk about the basics of scouting, which are still unknown to most fans.

So let’s go!

In simple terms, what is scouting?

In a nutshell, this is the search and evaluation of players.

In more detail, this is the whole process starting from the analysis and evaluation of the current composition; identifying priority positions that need to be strengthened; compiling profiles of players for different positions, describing their model characteristics (skills); data analysis and search for the best candidates and ending with the preparation of final lists with detailed reports on candidates.

How does the process of finding a player for the needs of the team (head coach, sports director) begin?

Situations are different, depending on what the club needs. For example, a new coach came to the club with a certain vision of football, which he wants to put on, which he wants to see in the club, and he needs players for specific positions with certain model characteristics, actions, skills that these players should perform with this particular coach .

Let’s take one position – the central defender. For some, the ideal central defender is someone who completely “takes off the top”, is good in martial arts both at the top and at the bottom. For some, a defender must have a high level of technical and creative skills in order to build a build-up through him.

Therefore, the trainer’s requests may be different – depending on them, the search model is built. The coaching staff and sports department discuss what model characteristics the coach needs from the players for the task he wants to perform. Further, on the basis of the obtained data, a technical task is drawn up.

We decipher for ourselves what exactly the coach wants, because, conditionally, he may need a fast player. However, what is a fast player? These can be twenty skills that can be reflected in a football player in different ways – from the speed of his run, both starting and distance, to the speed of decision-making or work with the ball. These points are included in the terms of reference, where there is a list of model characteristics for the position that the head coach needs.

Next, we start searching for a player according to the characteristics we have selected, outlining to ourselves his profile, which we see. In the player’s profile, there are several priority skills, secondary skills, and we are already looking for a football player for them. A key source of information when selecting players is our scouting base. Each club has its own developed base of players. It has been created over the years – for example, it may contain players who have been studied earlier in previous scouting tasks.

In general, even if the selection department does not have the task of finding a specific player, scouts regularly watch tournaments in search of interesting players.