Prospect Scouting [TIPS INSIDE]:Creating a New Scouting Rubric
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I come from an background in education - in my day job I’m a teacher, and manage a campus - along with running the curriculum.
A part of that curriculum management includes updating assessments and rubrics.
With that in mind, I’m looking at adding that practice into the hobby and my writing.
It’ll start with a slight update on the prospect scouting.
In this article, I’ll go over those changes, and see how some of the previous prospects stack up against each other.
If It Ain’t Broke….
In my prospect scouting reports I’ve been using a basic run-down of the player, a “what’s next” for them section, and some info about their cards.
I think it works well.
But the only thing it doesn’t do is compare players. I wanted to include that kind of element to the reports.
So the changes will reflect that.
Basically, I’ve chosen six factors to judge players on. Each will be judged on a scale of 1-4:
Minutes
"Feel"
Ball Progression
Defending
Creation
Finishing
I spent ages narrowing a list down, and these are the categories I came up with.
I’ll go into what they entail a little later.
The Caveats
This criteria is subject to change when I find something better
This is more subjective than I’d like, but I’ll be using statistics and data like I have been throughout
This list only really tackles attacking players - That’s not ideal, and if I was doing this for a club the criteria would differ from position to position. However, the vast majority of the time we’re assessing attack-minded players in the hobby
I’m using phrases like “smaller” and “bigger” clubs. This is relative to the hobby. I’d argue that Ajax is a big club - however, when it comes to the hobby, it would be a smaller club. You don’t see many Ajax players going for big bucks.
This isn’t perfect, but should hopefully give you a better insight
The Six Factors (And A Little Info on Each)
Here’s a bit more of a run-down on each factor and an example of how I’d score them.
For a general rule of thumb, consider the following:
Your average player in the top five league or below
A solid pro for a bigger league
International class, could play a role for a top side
Absolute would class
Keep in mind that this scale is for card relevant players, so we're really splitting hairs with the top end of players around the world.
All player names are linked to their eBay sales page.
Minutes
I’ve been chatting a lot about minutes recently. It’s the most underrated stat for prospects.
With a 1-4 basis, the marking would look something like this.
Bench player/Fringe starter for a smaller side
Starter for a smaller side, bench for a bigger side
Fringe starter for a bigger side: Mason Greenwood is a good example of this
Regular starter for a top club: Trent Alexander Arnold is the perfect 4/4 in this category. Playing vital minutes, and one of the first names on the team sheets for one of the best clubs in the world
Minutes for the National Team also factor here. Obviously top players that represent nations that don't compete for titles will be screwed over a bit here - but you could argue that they're screwed over in general.
"Feel"
Feel is maybe the hardest feature to define, and easily the hardest to improve (in my opinion). Here we’re talking cognitive reactions and (here’s a great article about “feel” in basketball from someone way smarter than I am). We’re talking about the following:
Vision
Positioning
Decision Making
Other things like making dummy runs to create space for a teammate
For a 1-4 scale we’re looking at lower numbers being those who are frequently making poor decisions like not seeing a pass, or trying to take on the extra man. A player that scores higher makes fewer mistakes and is regularly making good decisions.
There’s also some grey area in this one. There might be some players that could have great passing vision but some pretty poor decision making at times. Bruno Fernandes is a great example of this - Incredible vision, but can sometimes lose the ball in his defensive third doing something needlessly dumb. He’d still get at least a three, possible a four because what he does well impacts winning so much.
Ball Progression
At the end of the day, Soccer is still an “invasion” style game. You’ve got to progress the ball to the other side of the field to score.
Great progressors of the ball are needed in any side, and often play key roles.
When scoring, I’m looking at the quantity of ball progressions by both foot and off the dribble/run.
For example, someone like Curtis Jones of Liverpool is proficient in progressive passing with over eight progressive passes per 90 minutes, but isn’t a great at progressing the ball with running or dribbling.
Players like Jadon Sancho or Callum Hudson-Odoi are players that I’d consider to be great at progressing the ball by passing and running/dribbling and their numbers back it up.
Defending
This really depends on the player’s role in the side. However, for a scoring system, it’s safe to assume the following:
Low scores will happen when a player doesn’t try on the defensive end
Players will score well when they hold position defensively
I’m not looking for numbers like tacking rate or anything like that. Judging a player by their total tackles is a bit of a mess. For starters, when I used to play CB I’d tackle all the time - because I was too slow to be in the right position.
Or, to quote Paolo Maldini, “If I have to make a tackle, then I have already made a mistake.”
Creation
When judging creation, I’m looking at some of these aspects of a player’s game:
Dribbles into the box
Passes into the box
Shot assists
Through balls
Smart passes
The higher a player’s score, the better chance creator they are. A four is absolute world class - I’m talking Kevin De Bruyne level.
Finishing
Pretty simple this one. I’m looking at how a player finishes the chances that they get. However, I’m also looking at things like how often a player receives the ball in the box and how many chances they get per match.
I’m looking at headed finishing alongside regular finishing with the foot.
If a player has proven to be a great finisher at a high level for a decent sample size, then they’d be eligible for a high grade.
A player like Erling Haaland would already be a three or a four in this category.
Other Important Things to Know
The score is for what they’re doing now, not what I think their potential is - if you want a potential score out of 100 use FIFA 😂
A player’s score on this rubric will change over time - the more we see of a player, the more they develop, and the more data we have
If I don’t have enough tape to fully judge a player on a category, they’ll automatically get a one or a two, depending on the category. I can't assume someone is world class as something, that devalues higher ratings.
Positions are compared to one-another. So you’d expect a striker to do better in finishing than a defender - potentially, if I use different rubrics for different positions I could look to change that. But for now this is perfect.
Using This Rubric for Popular Players
This rubric will be shown on a radar graph.
Here’s an example, of what it might look like with some well known players along with guys I’ve written reports for in the past.
Trent Alexander Arnold is an interesting example to use here. He’s a view of what his might look like.
Trent has a set role in a big club, he’s an elite at progressing the ball, and at his best shows great creativity when setting up opponents (this has slowed down a little this year with Liverpool’s defensive woes meaning TAA has to stay closer to home at times).
Gianluca Busio is another interesting player for this because he’s in the MLS.
I didn’t deep dive back into Busio’s report for this, so this is more of an example rather than gospel. But I think a basic rule of thumb will be that’s it’ll be almost impossible for a player to score a four in any category while playing in a smaller league unless they’re really proving to be something special.
Otherwise you’ll have a player like Busio scoring the same as a top Premier League midfielder.
Final Thoughts
This rubric should make things a little easier going forward. It’ll also give me scope to be high on a player without giving the impression that he’s going to be an absolute world class player.
Let me know what you think! Let me know if there’s anything you’d add or take away.
Next week I'll be scouting one of the hottest South American prospects.
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