On the seat of a Technical Director: Validation of tipped players

Figure 1: Scouting process of a club in professional football

This blog will highlight how we can help you validating tips in a way you’ve not experienced before. Within a few clicks you will have a good indication if the player offered will be interesting to strengthen your squad, for both the short term and the long term. This is done by using the SciSkill Index, which consists out of the SciSkill (short term) and the SciSkill Potential (long term)

When you are a TD, you will be in contact with players representatives regularly. Every agent will know that, normally, you are the shot-caller when it comes to signing a player. So, in the organisation of a professional football club, you are the person they want to talk to (and they will find you).

This will result in several calls, emails, texts or WhatsApp messages with player names, all described as the next big thing for your club. And right there is where your problem begins; How are you going to validate all these names? How do you make sure that you are not missing that one rough diamond that will lift your team to a higher level and will tenfold his value in the future?

By using our SciSports platform you can sort the wheat from the chaff with just several mouse clicks. This will save you a decent amount of time, which could be used analysing the interesting players you just distinguished.

As mentioned, you are the TD at a mid-table La Liga side, for instance Real Sociedad.

Figure 2: Shadow team of Real Sociedad’s current squad in SciSports’ platform

The average SciSkill level of a starter in your team is 93,8. The SciSkill range you want to look for is somewhere between the 82,0 and 104,0. This range will fit your team in terms of players who will have the chance to grow to the level of your team (SciSkill 82,0 and above) and some players who will lift your teams level immediately (SciSkill from 94,0 and above). As you can easily detect in your Shadow Team above, your weak sports are the Left Back (due the fact that Theo Hernández will return to Real Madrid) and the Midfield positions. Time to look for some interesting players. Looking at Real Sociedad’s transfer history, the club will allow you to spent max. €15 million for a transfer target.

With this framework, you can start validating the tips you have received from several agents over the past few weeks. Lets take a look at the list with (random) names you have received:

Figure 3: List with 30 random selected player names

Some names sounded familiar but most of them are players that you have never seen in action or have in-depth information about. Probably because they are playing in countries you don’t have presence in. Normally, it would take at least a couple of hours before you have a indication of which players are interesting for your club. But here’s your solution: SciSports’ football intelligence platform.

By filling in these 30 names in the SciSports’ platform, you will have an indication of which players are interesting to have a closer look at and which players are a waste of your time. Not even five minutes later the list will be enriched with information that will give you an trustworthy overview at a glance.

Figure 4: List with 30 player names with descending order on SciSkill as well as the display of several other parameters

On this list, you will notice that from the 30 names, fifteen names are not in your SciSkill range and thus are more the less not very interesting to follow up (at the moment). Please note that in this case we are looking for direct replacements and filter accordingly. So for your understanding, we don’t take into account the SciSkill Potential scores of the shortlisted players. The highlighted players are in your range and could be interesting players for your club regarding their SciSkill level.

Now that you have managed to halve your list within a couple of minutes, you can take a closer look and probably filter out some other names fitting your conditions (i.e. age, Potential, contract status, market value).

Due their market value it’s unlikely that the players worth €15 million or more will sign for your club and thus are no longer interesting players for you to follow. From the nine players left, only six players are capable of playing in the positions you are looking for (Midfielders/Left Backs):

Figure 5: List with 15 player names marked by bold text and colored market values

Now that you have created your shortlist out of the 30 names, you can go through to the next phase of your scouting process, start video- or livescouting your six transfer objectives.