25 Aug 2014

Football, as a global sport, is growing every day and player scouting is one of the most important aspects of the game.

Each and every day clubs are continually looking to develop their squads by bringing in players who would ultimately help the club to become successful on the field of play and beyond. As a result of player scouting, clubs gain immense financial rewards.

Football is a business and the biggest clubs in the world which are concerned about making profit have worldwide scouting networks. Their main emphasis is placed on identifying talented players and signing them at a young age.

Therefore the person or people behind all the talent identification are called player scouts. Scouts everywhere in the world study the youth market. They believe in players with great potential and mostly they attend youth tournaments, school championships and lower division leagues. Portuguese giants FC Porto specialise in acquiring talent at a cheaper prize from across the world.

And then years later when a player has established himself, they sell them at a huge profit. A closer example is South African side Jomo Cosmos which is famous for discovering raw talent and then selling them to much bigger clubs.

However, bringing that to Botswana, some bigger clubs are known to feed from younger clubs for players. Cubs such as Notwane and Uniao Flamengo Santos just to name a few have along the years identified talented players who were later sold to other teams.

These teams have been producing talented players who go on to play in professional leagues across Africa. In the previous seasons, local clubs signed foreign players who later became top goal scorers and then sold to bigger clubs.


In Europe, few scouts are employed full-time, while others are hired on a part-time basis but they all have one main task, to identify players. In Botswana football, as opposed to using scouts, technical departments in the clubs are responsible for finding and recruiting players.

The secretary general of Gaborone United, Herbert Letsebe said the technical team headed by the coach was responsible for identifying potential players for their team. He said the players were then recommended to the executive committee where a decision about recruitment was made. “We don’t have any scouts at GU, we are not there yet” he said.

Letsebe said in some cases where one of the members of the committee identify talent, they recommend the coach to assess the players and in the end the coach decides whether to go with the player or not.

For his part, Extension Gunners chairman, Kitso Dlamini said that they do not have scouts but rather have a dedicated technical department which works hand in hand with the player agents to identify talent.

“We look at players from all divisions, we target the youth because age is very important in football,” he said. Moreover, in some countries scouts have to meet strict rules set by the national association and are cautiously managed by the Club.

Botswana football association currently has player agents registered under them but some work as scouts. In an interview, BFA communications manager, Phakamile Kraai said agents worked as intermediary between the players and the teams.

“They work as scouts by identifying the player, then linking them with the team and in most cases they end up representing the players as agents,” he said.

Kraai said in cases of choosing players for the under-15, under-17, and under-20 national team sides, the coach with the assistance of the technical director were duly responsible for recruiting players.

He said at BFA they did not have any hired player scout to go around the country and look for players. Soccer scouts do not work alone; they get advice from agents, peers and club colleagues.

Most professional and semi-professional football clubs have a team of scouts whose role is to search for new talent and invite them for trials at their club and make decisions the crucial goal being to sign the best players.

Scouts do not sign players, but rather the decision is left to the coach and sporting directors. Botswana does not have fulltime scouts yet but there is a team of people who perform this role and they have been doing it for years now.

Perhaps by the time Botswana football becomes fully professional, scouting would be thing of the moment and professional clubs would hire scouts for talent acquisition. Ends