February 26 – Youth talent development and global scouting are key weapons in the arsenal of clubs looking to get an edge, and that’s one of the reasons FC Bayern Munich have just released @fcbayernpathway.
December 4 – Premier League Brentford have renewed their collaboration with talent scouting digital platform Eyeball.Club that will see the Bees integrate Eyeball.Club’s software into their talent identification systems, complementing their traditional scouting methods which have proved to be successful since breaking into the Premier League in 2021.
May 3 – The rapidly-growing artificial intelligence industry is making its mark on the scouting and recruitment of the next generation of young footballers. British startup ai.io is emerging as one of the leaders in a sector that it hopes will revolutionise talent identification.
Neil McGuinness works as a scout for Aspire in Qatar. Previously, he scouted many years for European elite clubs. The global scout, with Scottish roots, talks to Samindra Kunti about modern-day scouting, scouting in Britain and the rise of China in the global game.
September 23 – A new social network designed to help players connect with clubs, scouts, agents and coaches has launched. Playerhunter aims of simplify the process of trawling for players, checking them out and speeding the time to contract, while at the same time opening up the number of opportunities to find the clubs that would work for them.
By Mark Baber
April 7 – The latest CIES Football Observatory Monthly Report includes statistics showing that young forwards progress a bit faster in terms numbers of appearances than young midfielders, faster than defenders and a lot faster than young goalkeepers on average.