How Scouts Identify Future Football Superstars
Economics is everywhere. Even in the football field. One Sebatian Abbot has demonstrated as such in a study which was published in 2016. The author focuses on African soccer and the strategies used by scouts to identify future stars for possible recruitment in Europe and other parts of the world.
Read More:
The search begins with focus on the young player’s skills but that is not enough to tell whether those kids will reach the apex of their careers.
There are a number of factors (physical) which are taken into consideration. These are five(5) main factors which are considered by the scouts. These are: agility, speed, passing, dribbling and shooting. At least these are the indicators used by the German Soccer Federation on assessment of Under-12 players.
The researchers who developed the report in question were assessing how the above mentioned indicators can be used to determine the Under-16 and Under-19 who can become super stars in future.
The study report determined that the kids who score in the 99th percentile had just 6% chance of joining the national youth soccer team.
This means that there are many other factors that need to be considered which include the player’s game intelligence. Where they are shown game footage and at some point the match is paused to ask players to predict what could happen or what decision a given player should ideally make.
Players with a growth potential give accurate predictions in this matter. They quickly scan the field and assess the position of opponents. Then they accurately predict the next move.
Finally, researchers discovered that one of the ingredients of identifying a future soccer staris to look at their history in terms of playing football in informal setting such as school playgrounds, streets and not how many official matches they have played.
These research findings have a huge impact in soccer management and decision-making.
Follow us on Twitter @gkerosi
