The nature and function of talent identification in junior-elite football in English category one academies

Abstract

The focus of this study was to examine the nature and function of talent identification in category one football academies in the UK. Data were collected from three participant groups: heads of recruitment (n=12), recruitment staff (n=18), and scouts (n=7). Data were collected by means of semi-structured interviews, conducted either face-to-face or via Skype®. Four themes emerged from the data: 1) league structures in junior grassroots football; 2) reflective practice; 3) looking at the whole player; and 4) luck. The paper concludes by suggesting that there are issues that need to be considered by the football association, county football associations, and clubs. Those issues include the organisation of leagues in junior football, the education of scouts and recruitment staff around reflective practice and understanding how to identify psycho-social attributes whilst identifying talent.

A case study of the use of verbal reports for talent identification purposes in soccer: A Messi affair!

“…Interestingly, the recruitment philosophy was visible in the interview room–a vinyl graphic occupying approximately two-thirds of a wall–when Adam and Ben were asked how accurate their thoughts and observations were in relation to this, they responded by further disagreeing with their previous verbalisations and aligning their responses to factors highlighted in the vinyl graphic. Such dissonance between philosophies and on-the-ground practice have been reported in previous studies [12, 14].…”

“…Talent scouts act as the on-the-ground face of the clubs that they represent; they are the individuals who often make first contact with potentially talented players. Whilst their primary function is to identify players and pass on information to full-time recruitment staff, they regularly continue to communicate with players and their family during and after a trial period with the club may have taken place [12]. Talent scouts, therefore, play an important role in the decision-making process regarding the players that are recruited to a club; they observe, capture data, and employ subjective judgements based on on-field actions [13].…”

“…In most instances, academies collate a range of opinion-based qualitative and quantitative data on individual players that is loosely positioned around the clubs’ recruitment and playing philosophy [14, 15]. Observations are usually, but not always, repeated a number of times before a decision is made about whether or not to recruit a player [12, 14, 15]. Evidence from England, however, suggest that academies are not good at determining or, more precisely, explaining what attributes they are observing when they are trying to identify talented youngsters [14, 15]; a suggestion that is echoed in talent identification and development work elsewhere [5, 16].…”

“…In support of this Mills and colleagues [26] reported how ten expert development coaches considered discrete psychological factors such as awareness, resilience, goal directed attributes, intelligence, sport-specific attributes, and the environment as fundamental if players were to progress to the professional level. To date, however, there has been little interest in recruitment staff as a participant group for talent identification research, many previous studies have, as already mentioned, tended to utilise coaches [27, 28] despite coaches, arguably, having greater responsibility for player development than identification [12, 14]. Those studies that have included recruitment staff as participants have, so far, used semi-structured interview techniques to elicit the factors affecting the talent identification process from a structural, organisational [12, 14] and philosophical perspective [29].…”

“He’s Just a Wee Laddie”: The Relative Age Effect in Male Scottish Soccer

“…It is also suggested that RAE bias could exist due to social factors, such as an earlier engagement in sporting activities or (un)conscious judgments by coaches influenced by physical factors related to growth and maturation ( Hancock et al, 2013 ; Wattie et al, 2014 ). Although progress in understanding and communicating the RAE has been made over recent years, the “win now” emphasis encompassing youth sport remains, particularly within soccer ( Andronikos et al, 2016 ; Reeves et al, 2018a ; Hill et al, 2019 ; Lupo et al, 2019 ; Jackson and Comber, 2020 ). This demand for immediate success has resulted in a maturation-selection phenomenon, whereby chronologically older players are preferred due to their superior physical qualities ( Lovell et al, 2015 ; Johnson et al, 2017 ; Hill et al, 2019 ).…”