In The Philippines, Every Football Player Needs A Scout

Scouts pay attention to details. Scouts produce honest reports. And those are two reasons why every player needs to be evaluated by a scout. 

I’ve been coaching in the Philippines for the past four years. I’ve seen many young players with the potential to make it to a top level of football … if they develop properly.

Courtesy: GoalNation

The problem is the way young players shuffle between clubs and school football. The back-and-forth makes it difficult to measure development and chart progress. In many cases, that means player development can be slow (if not stagnant) and sometimes without direction.

I believe strongly in what’s called Pearson’s Law, It states: “When performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and reported back, the rate of improvement accelerates.”

While it’s hard to argue against that law, the question I ask is this: How many coaches know how to evaluate players? Furthermore, what attributes should they be looking at when evaluating players in different age groups?

Even when they know how to evaluate, coaches can sometimes evaluate incompletely. For example, in my ten years of coaching, the evaluation I receive the most from coaches is this: “He has a great touch, good vision, passing ability, and scores goals. He’s real quality.”

While some or all of that may be true, I sometimes uncover other issues as I do my own evaluation. For example: “He has a bad attitude. He wouldn’t run. He’s not a team player.”

I also find that “other factors” get in the way of more objective assessments. For example, coaches in youth academies may choose to please players’ parents rather than produce ‘honest’ reports.

Courtesy: FourFourTwo

Given the status of evaluations currently, I believe there is an important role to be played by scouts. Scouts pay attention to details. Scouts produce honest reports. And those are two reasons why every player needs to be evaluated by a scout.

Scouting will help us evaluate players beyond what’s called “talent spotting,” that is, spotting the obvious. We need to zoom into players’ attributes by giving attention to detail. That’s exactly what scouts do.

We don’t have enough football scouts in the Philippines. But there are scouting services available. Using those services could go a long way in helping young players develop.

It’s important to think about as we plan for our country’s football development.