Bears Repeating: Exhaustive Scouting

We discovered these athletes awaiting the league game of a U15 Young Heroes F.C. (an Eswatini youth football club) player. Initial documentation is as literal as marking discoveries and confirming with coaches. We will attend a Young Heroes F.C. U13 training session and discover more. This process is boots on the ground and exhaustive scouting.

Hello,

Our database and change ideas are about talent's spectrum and understanding that you are not scouting by noticing the "top one percent." We cannot record only a few players and call it scouting. Nothing is more convenient than spotting the upper echelon of youth athletes. You must understand that committing solely to discovering the top one percent is adhering to one percent of scouting. So, we have built a methodology that breaks the aged incorrectness of finding the top one percent and ignoring the rest.

Part of our process is finding talent where it is (versus forcing kids to come to us via tryouts, identification events, or other assessments in unrealistic settings, ones requiring fees or being distant). Observing kids in unnatural environments like the above or requiring fees or extensive travel to be seen does not yield proper detection, nor does it showcase full-player pools. Some events, like free tournaments (despite kids likely still having to travel further than their community or town's league field) involving clubs, youth academies, or schools, are positive, unlike amassing selected or financially fortunate individuals to compete randomly (like at a regional "Stars" match, tryouts, fee-based identification events, etc.). When done correctly, free tournaments give Fisher Talent Group a more populated talent pool and authentic games with a player's genuine squad and realistic football. However, tracking discoveries from those events is the next part of our methodology in uncovering talent's spectrum. In Eswatini, for example, these competitions exist, enhancing kids' joy for football and providing a reasonable opportunity for them to be seen domestically by the national team and professional clubs. However, at Fisher Talent Group, we know that more kids, teams, and talent exist in those clubs' communities and schools, and the tournament is the surface. We use those events to mark the exterior of a talent pool and identify where to dive (which clubs, schools, and communities to plunge into that have additional talent). Then, we go there.

We explore club and school training sessions, community pickup games, league games, and anywhere closer to home for athletes. Whether or not our scouting map derives from a tournament (observing a talent pool and connecting with players and coaches and plotting a course) or from continuously doing the same outside of them, we go to talent. Our diving is because we know that tournaments (club or school-based, free or not), identification events, tryouts, camps, clinics, etc., present only the lid of talent's spectrum. Most importantly, we know that understanding details about the quality of players at those events happens through tracking—because we cannot measure potential by seeing athletes once at a tournament, at a similar event, or repeatedly at the same affair. Everything is about believing in talent's spectrum and positioning ourselves to spot, learn, and understand it. The latter is about knowing its strengths, weaknesses, hardships, needs, etc. As Fisher Talent Group, we do not hold tryouts, identification events, or anything similar to identify talent. In the future, we aim to have a free showcase to showcase discovered talent (like a Database Showcase, for example, that we televise, stream, or rebroadcast), but never to spot talent. By bringing folks into African talent's vastness, we believe they will dive deeper into the communities, clubs, schools, leagues, training, etc., as we do. We think it will attract investment and resources and forge appeal. Professional scouting departments will see the immensity and acknowledge that more kids and talent exist than we are showing.

Fisher Talent Group seeks talent where it is. We emphasize local football and define our process by depth. Player discovery and equal opportunity stem from boots on the ground and committing to the process instead of skimming the surface. As long as our mentality exists, so does talent's spectrum. Anyone can notice the "next Messi" at identification events, tryouts, camps, clinics, etc. However, often, the inconspicuous defender playing astutely, remaining errorless, will be in that category and dismissed (or perhaps they will be absent like the next Messi could be, which is because of lacking travel funds, etc.—this is prominent in Africa but exists globally in multiple forms).

Talent's spectrum is not a range whereby anyone wanting to give football a go or anyone who enjoys the game or desires "playing professionally" is part of it. Folks are talented at different sports and various things. However, when correctly assembled, talent's spectrum reveals that athletes are nip and tuck initially. Identifying, documenting, and tracking them allows players to grow, evolve, and change and become what you might have missed as a scout if you sought the top one percent when an unformed athlete was twelve or even sixteen. At Fisher Talent Group, we will turn the world on to this idea and open the African continent (as a whole versus single regions like West Africa) as a robust talent territory folks explore unreservedly. Countless kids can play professionally in their country, internationally, at a United States university or college elsewhere, or in a youth academy where they build contacts, make friends, explore and learn different ideas, etc. Endless positives derive from finding and promoting talent's spectrum (and doing the work to understand it), including the desire and ability to remain or advance in football and variously use your gift because opportunities know about it.

Scouting is about discovery. Moreover, it is about love, equal opportunity, and ubiquity, which bears repeating.

Please donate.

We cannot change the world independently, but we will together.

Until next time.

Live forever, Rob Fisher Executive Director and Head of Scouting