Scouts Freelancer

Club scouts follow specific guidelines, while freelancers explore diverse profiles, adapting to the needs of each client. Both, with different approaches, are essential in the search for football talent.

When we talk about a football scout, as we have always said, we are referring to a club scout, integrated into the scouting department. This can be in large clubs, where the scouts within the departments can be divided by categories—those dedicated to finding players for the reserve team, those focusing on the first team, or even those for youth teams. There are also scouts in more modest clubs, where they work in a smaller section with one or two scouts responsible for finding players for the entire club.

But today, I want to talk to you a bit more about another type of scout, an independent scout, who seeks players at the request of clubs or representative agencies. This type of scout has the same objective as any other: to find good players who might stand out in the future due to their characteristics, whether it be their technique, playing style, position on the field, or even their personality, an important trait that is sometimes overlooked.

However, there are some differences in how these scouts work and explore. One difference is the type of player they are looking for. While club scouts search for a profile that fits the team's or club's playing style, with characteristics defined by the coach or sporting director, freelance scouts go a bit further and must look for all types of players, whether for a team with quick ball movement or one with more ball possession and a combined playing style, with very varied characteristics depending on the club's demands.

Given the need to search for players of different profiles, a scout must have a wide pool of players with distinct characteristics that set them apart from the rest. This pool should be available when clubs are looking for those unique players.

In my opinion, having a player pool is very important. It is built over a season where a player has excelled as a footballer and stands out with clear data compared to other seasons, or perhaps through following a player's progress over several seasons. For example, in the case of young players, when tracking their development, whether they adapt well to a new category or when, due to their age, they require more continuous monitoring to see how they evolve as a player and what type of game they adapt to best within that evolution.

Continuous monitoring allows you to see more clearly the player's strengths and weaknesses, which sometimes even allows you to help them improve in certain areas and thus determine which club they might be best suited for.

Another important point for both types of scouts, but more necessary for a freelance scout, is collaboration—whether with clubs, coaches, agents, or technical directors. Collaboration in scouting is essential to reach more players and stay informed about the most outstanding ones.

For freelance scouts, collaborations are the best way to move that player pool and find work. Not being tied to a club, they have to find ways to get clubs and agencies to hire their services, whether through occasional collaborations or even for a full season. The scout, after agreeing with the club on the characteristics of the players to search for, tracks players who might interest the team and recruits them for the club throughout the season.

Freelance scouts have more freedom in choosing players, meaning it’s not necessary to look for a specific type of player. This makes the list of interesting players much broader, allowing them to scout in any category regardless of geographical location. This enables them to better identify interesting players or have more options for discovering a standout player.

This does not mean that a club scout won’t notice an excellent player whose style or position is not what the club is looking for and won’t try to recruit them. However, finding a place for them in the team might be more difficult if they don’t meet the club's or team's criteria, which is why it is important to have a wide range of contacts and to collaborate among scouts.

In such cases, a club scout can collaborate with other scouts who might be looking for players with those characteristics or a specific position.

There are small differences between these two types of scouts, but what most of them have in common is that they are former players or football analysts. This vision of the game is what allows them to see and identify players who stand out or could differentiate themselves from the rest in the future. A scout must have a good "clinical eye" to discover a player’s strengths or even know that they can bring out those strengths before they stand out.

In my opinion, both types of scouts, whichever you prefer to call them, are very interesting and valuable for clubs or representative agencies. As a scout, I must admit that I find both models very interesting.

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