Inside professional soccer’s remote scouting revolution

The way we work is changing as operating remotely becomes increasingly common. That’s even true for the world of soccer scouting.

After firing Leicester to the Premier League’s summit with a 2-0 win over Chelsea in late January, James Maddison used his post-match interview to highlight the work of esteemed Leicester analyst Jack Lyons. A former tactics blogger, Lyons was snapped up by Foxes boss Brendan Rodgers due to his online content, a testament to the growing importance of data and analytics in soccer. One group benefitting from this increased visibility is the remote network of scouts, analysts and bloggers Lyons hails from.

Last November, Ashwin Raman, a 17-year-old high school student based in Bengaluru, India, revealed on Twitter that he was working as a remote scout for Scottish Premier League side Dundee United. The appointment of Raman, an online tactics blogger with no previous experience in the professional game, underlined the innovative methods clubs are adopting in relation to scouting. However, Raman’s unconventional path into the game is not entirely unique.

“I’m seeing a lot more people get into big roles at clubs, and a lot more money being pumped into analysis departments,” Raman told me over Zoom, grinning excitedly, having completed his school exams the previous day.

“Video scouting has given me the chance to look at everyone across the planet rather than being limited to certain jobs and locations. Coupled with data analysis, where I can download stats for all players, it’s given me massive advantages,” he continued.

“The reason I got into tactical analysis at all was because of Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski’s Soccernomics, which introduced me to the concept of viewing football in a more analytical way. That was the hook.”

Raman’s early work included an analysis of Graham Potter’s Östersunds, and a statistical transfer piece that highlighted Allisson as a top target for Liverpool. This was before rumors had started circulating surrounding the Brazilian keeper, so unsurprisingly, the teenager’s insight caused his following to expand.

How does someone get started as a remote soccer scout or analyst?

The Dundee United scout is quick to pay tribute to the online network of fellow fanatics who helped foster his analytical skills.

“I learnt everything I knew about tactics and analytics from people inside the community. Ideas travel quite fast across communities, and there’s also collaboration, in terms of ideas … I’ve found the community extremely, extremely nice.”

Raman is not the only person who recognizes the supportive nature of Twitter’s remote scouting community. Russell Pope, Director of Analytics for the University of North Carolina Women’s (UNCW) soccer program, and Head of Academy and Performance Analysis at English National League side Sutton United, concurs:

“It feels like a community. If someone with a small profile asks me to retweet their work, I’m more than happy to do that, because I got that in the first instance.”

“I think clubs are looking more to Football Twitter now… there’s a lot of good, knowledgeable guys on there, a lot of them being recruited by clubs in different countries. The technology’s so good that you can do your job from home.”

Having secured both his analytical roles thanks to his Twitter posting, Pope knows the value of online scouting content. A recent Southampton Solent graduate, he operates from his family home in Kent, England. While discussing his work, he noted global differences in how clubs choose to interpret analytics.

“There’s no right or wrong, but there’s differences. [With American soccer], they do love the numbers, and a lot of my remit is to get the hard data and interpret it from there, whereas with Sutton it’s more analyzing the tactical performance.”

“It’s about finding that happy medium … I think to have hard data you need to be able to interpret it. If you’re looking more at the subjective tactical side of it, it’s always beneficial to have the data to back that up.”

It’s clear that despite the collaborative nature of the remote soccer scouting community, different factions exist. Marc Lamberts, analyst and academy scout at Dutch Eredivisie side VVV Venlo, detailed to me the various sections of this online network.

“There’s a community of people who already have a job, so you exchange tips and contacts and maybe players. Then you have the engagement analytics part of Twitter, those are people writing to engage with an audience. For example, if I was to write a scout report on a player, my Director of Football would just want 10 lines, but if I was writing online, I could write a piece of 2,000, 3,000 words.”

“The other part is people who try to get into positions. Getting into a club is difficult because you want to showcase your work, you want to showcase you are able to do short reports and long reports, you are able to do data scouting, video scouting, analysis, and that’s a part of Twitter where there’s a lot of advising, a lot of feedback, a lot of discourse.”

The complexity and difficulty of gaining employment at a professional club is something Raman similarly identifies. When asked about the downside of changes to how scouting operates, he doesn’t hold back.

“Cynically speaking, remote scouting offers a way for clubs to cut overheads and lower costs all over the board. Data is basically a tool for improving resource allocation.”

He identifies two conflicting factors at play; the heightened funding for analysis departments at professional clubs, versus the growing competition incentivizing teams to cut costs. However, there are reasons to be hopeful about the future of scouting in an increasingly remote world.

According to Lamberts, remote scouting “has really opened the eyes of the people responsible for data recruitment, scouting or analysis, and they are looking more to online possibilities.”

“I think we’ve seen what an analyst can do. You don’t have to be from certain backgrounds, you can be 17 or 58, it’s all about quality. I think we should get more respect, but I also know that it’s a slow-paced world in football, so there’s not a lot of immediate change, but I think we’re going in the right direction now”.

Certainly, those within the remote scouting community can feel the industry shifting. Prompted by technological developments and escalated by the pandemic, the way players are recruited, analyzed and coached has changed dramatically in recent years. Pioneers within data, analytics and scouting have demonstrated that imaginative recruitment pays off. Whether you’re a well-paid coach sprawled across the offices of an elite club, or an Indian teenager operating from your bedroom, there’s a place for you in the remote scouting revolution.