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Football scouting has undergone substantial changes, with technology now taking the lead role.
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Employees have the opportunity to view multiple games each day without having to leave the club’s practice facility.
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The depiction of the football scout is quite potent. Picture this: someone cloaked in an overcoat lurking at the rear of the stands, quietly slipping out undetected just before the final whistle blows, prepared to propel the upcoming soccer sensation into stardom.
Life has taken a slightly different turn by 2025. With video scouting, recruitment personnel now have the ability to view numerous matches each day from within their own club’s training facility. This convenience extends beyond just senior-level games; recordings of youth team competitions across various tiers are readily accessible with merely a click of a button.
Equipped with advanced data models, clubs now possess an incredible amount of information even before a conventional scout gets a chance to observe the player firsthand. This shift has prompted several teams to reduce their reliance on physical scouts and increase investment in video scouting instead.
Finding the next
Lionel Messi
or
Cristiano Ronaldo
The aspiration is to identify talented youth players globally. However, considering the vast number of aspiring footballers worldwide, it becomes nearly unattainable for clubs to do so independently. Therefore, numerous organizations resort to utilizing scouting platforms as an essential resource.
Eyeball
Among these are platforms tasked with providing vast coverage of youth leagues and tournaments – precisely the areas where clubs are looking to expand their reach.
Collaborating with Mail Sport, Eyeball has created an
unique roster of leading experts
Many fans will likely not recognize a significant portion of these players because they haven’t made their senior-level appearances yet. As such, both numerous followers and certain teams remain unfamiliar with them. However, those who keep an eye on emerging talent have known about them for quite a while now.
This implies that once these players make their debut appearances and gain recognition within the broader football community, their influence won’t come as a shock to individuals truly knowledgeable about the market—or to those following Mail Sport’s coverage of top emerging talents.
Eyeball is providing camera systems to leading clubs involved in youth football across 30 nations, mainly situated in Europe and West Africa, enabling these teams to record their games and forward the video content back to Eyeball.
The games are subsequently uploaded onto the scouting platform alongside team rosters and essential player details like age, height, nationality, position, and dominant foot. Eyeball has established 60 data parameters to evaluate these athletes, streamlining the process significantly for teams. This serves as an invaluable resource, bringing attention to numerous players who could easily go unnoticed by professional organizations.
After making their mark in Europe and West Africa, Eyeball is now setting its sights on South America, focusing particularly on Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia, and Ecuador as key markets.
For instance, top clubs no longer depend on external sources to discover talented players in Western Africa,” says Benjamin Balkin, the founder and commercial director of Eyeball. “Instead, they have their own scouts observing these markets, managing the entire process, and selecting promising athletes directly.
‘Consider Pape Diong moving straight to the BlueCo group (comprising Chelsea and Strasbourg) from Senegal in July 2024. Previously, he might have had to play in Belgium for several years before being signed. Currently, clubs are actively exploring talent across various regions. This shift should provide greater chances for numerous players.’
“We’re aiming to reduce the barriers to entry,” explains Oliver Dehnhardt, who leads football strategy at Eyeball and previously served as an international scout for Ajax. “If you speak with a premier league club’s chief scout, they would be aware of the best few academies in Africa over the last seven years.”
‘By the end of 2025, our aim is to gain access to around 200 prospects. We’re focusing on identifying those feeder academies that provide talent to well-known clubs like ASEC Mimosas, Generation Foot, and JMG Academy. Effective scouting involves managing risks; the higher frequency at which you scout, the more confident you become.’
‘Currently, leading clubs must secure talents directly from Africa or South America instead of waiting for them to move to teams like IFK Gothenburg or Club Bruges. This shift will result in an increased number of clubs adopting this strategy, with even more players departing annually from Africa towards Europe, the United States, or the Middle East.’
The Ecuadorian club Independiente del Valle has emerged as a key destination for European clubs seeking talented players who can be nurtured and then sold for significant profits.
Chelsea midfielder Moises Caicedo and Paris Saint-Germain defender Willian Pacho are among the players who have had stints with Independiente, earning the team elite status in European football. However, according to Dehnhardt, significant talent within Ecuador remains underappreciated – a gap that Eyeball aims to bridge.
‘Independiente boasts an impressive history, yet despite having extremely talented players in Ecuador, European clubs tend not to pay close attention to other teams because those teams lack the same brand recognition as Independiente,’ he clarifies.
‘This enables Independiente to acquire a promising young talent from a competitor club for a modest sum and subsequently sell them to European teams for significantly higher prices after a year. Our aim is to have European clubs consider talents from Ecuadorian sides like Barcelona Sporting Club, mitigating risks by observing multiple matches.’
Teams may still end up making poor acquisitions. Many fans can recall a player purchased by their club at a substantial price, only to witness them being offloaded for considerably less after just one season. However, given the ample resources accessible in 2025, sports managers have little excuse for continuing to err repeatedly in this area.
To learn more about how Eyeball has transformed youth football recruitment, check this link out.
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