Talent Identification In Football
The PFSA is the Home of Talent Identification and has ensured football scouting and best practices have always been an integral part of our education programme. Below we explore very briefly what is “Talent Identification” and the role of a football scout.
If you wish to take this further, and become a professional football scout, then register onto our leading portfolio of talent identification in football courses below, which have been taken by some of the UK and overseas’s top professionals within the game while also featuring in some of the worlds leading news outlets and Universities including; UCFB – Leading Footballing University, The Guardian, Independent, BBC, the Metro,Training Ground Guru and the Sun to name a few.
What is Talent Identification?
Definition of talent identification: “The process of finding promising players for a football club or academy”. However, that said “Talent” is extremely complex. The fundamental challenge in talent identification is that footballing talent does not develop in a single, linear way. This is because there is a wide range of factors that affect a player’s development. We look at several of these within our portfolio.
How does a professional football scout recognise talent?
Because talent develops in a non-linear way, professional scouts have to be able to recognise not just fully-developed talent, but potential as well. While most trained football professionals can recognise talent relatively easily, it takes greater skill and experience to recognise a player with potential.
The first step to identifying potential is to recognise what scouts refer to as “early indicators of talent.” These are key performance indicators that provide a basis for predicting which young players are likely to excel. There are lots of skills and abilities which might be seen as early indicators of talent. Different clubs—and even individual scouts—prioritise their own set of indicators. However, they all have one thing in common: they are fundamental transferable skills.
Talent Identification Courses
All PFSA Talent Identification in Football courses have been designed and developed by leading figures within the industry including Head of Recruitment, Academy Managers and Academy Directors within the Premier League. Click on the courses below for more information.
