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Scouting for the U21

Written by HighwayStar

Are you interested of what do the scouts do? Perhaps you might be even interested of helping out but don't know what the job would mean? In this article I look into some of the basic jobs for the U21 scout.

Scouting can be done in a many different way. The responses can be divided in a different ways. It also depends on how many helping hands there are to scout or are you alone.

The first thing to do if you are interested of being a scout is to contact the current U21 head coach to find out the situation.

The players path to the U21 starts from the academies. To know if a player is more suitable for the Continental Cup or for the World Cup you need to know his age. If you are part of the U21 staff, you are able to see the U21 Eligibility from the players own page. This helps a lot! You are also able to check it from the Hattrick Portal website and its Age for the World Cup tool. It is up to you if you want to follow players who can't play the whole competition or how many of the overaged players to follow.

To find the best talents in the academies, there are few ways to do it. There might be a thread on the forum for the academy talents, and that is good to check. You can also use Rate My Academy website to see what kind of player can be found through it. But the main way is through Hattrick and its Top Youth Player Search.

By using the Top Youth Player Search you go through every position to find the players who get the most stars in that position. And then you contact the owners and ask what skills these players have. As players might be fielded in a wrong position compered to their skills because of training, it’s good to go through the search every couple of weeks. Also new players might be found to the academies and for this reason also it’s good to activily search top youth players.

The contacts to the owners are very important. They are doing the training in the academy and many might want to train their players in the senior team as well. Some might want instructions how to get their players trained the best way and you can help them in it. It’s very important to keep good contacts with them.

Now you are starting to get a picture of what kind of players there are. You also know if someone is going to be sold once pulled to the senior team or if he is going to be trained by the owner. Perhaps someone who continues the training in the senior team might want to have more trainees along with his own player. That is good to ask. For the ones who are coming to the market, it would be nice to find a good potential trainer but that is usually difficult.

Then once the players start to get promoted to the senior team, there is one tool that is good to be active if you are a supporter. A Active Prospect Search. You make a Active Prospect Search for the players from your country who are 17y old and have some kind of starting skills. If you have multiple teams, you are able to make more searches active. Now if a player is coming to the market of whom you didn’t know, you are able to catch him to your lists to follow.

Once a player is sold, again it’s very important to contact the buyer. To ask what kind of plan there is for the player and if you can help him/her anyway. Always remember to be polite as the player is his/her and he/she isn’t obligated to train the player for the U21.

Now as the players start to be in the senior teams, it’s good to use the Hattrick Top Player search. Again if you find a player who looks promising and is not in your lists, then you contact the owner to find out if he has a potential for the U21 or not.

Now as the players are in the senior teams getting training, you continue monitoring them to see that things go as planned. The key players might be good to add in a bookmark (if you are a supporter) so that if for some reason one of them comes to the market, you know it right away. Usually some players do get sold and again it’s important to contact the new owner to see if the training is good for the U21.

If you are working in a scouting team, it's very important to communicate with them. Some players can be useful in a two different position and a decision needs to be made which way to go with them. If there are weakness in some position, perhaps someone from a stronger position can be switched to cover the weaker position. Or to use overaged or clearly younger players. There is no one right answer to this and many times in a small countries some positions are weaker than others. You just do the best you can with the players there are.

In a ideal world, there would be 2-3 scouts for each position, or on the other side you could be the one who is getting the works started. The situations change all the time.

The busiest time is when players got promoted, but after a while you know them like the back of your hand. Then when the time comes for these players to enter the U21 team, it’s up to the Head Coach to continue monitoring them. And as they lead your U21 team to the field, you can be proud of what they have become!