Football has undergone a great series of changes in the last decades that have caused a great evolution in it. Therefore, it is an increasingly demanding sport for both footballers and coaches who have been adding and acquiring new methods and technologies.

This series of impacts has caused a great increase, in number and quality, of professional roles or specific departments within the technical staff. An example is the game analysts or scouters, today absolutely essential for any team that wants to compete at a high performance level.

But, what do we understand by Game Analysis, and what of Scouting?

Game Analysis is a video analysis process as its name suggests, which is carried out by one person or a series of people within the coaching staff throughout the season.

These people usually carry out tasks such as the analysis of the team itself, of rivals in view of a possible matchups, live analysis of matches, analysis of training sessions, or even individual analysis of the players in the squad.

And the Scout? In many countries or contexts, the figure of the scout is directly related to the functions previously discussed in the game analysis. Even so, we understand it as the person or persons in charge of tracking and analyzing players for possible additions to our squad once they have made the “matching” between the player’s profile and the game model or philosophy of the club.

And, how is it structured ?

A good reference on how an analysis department is structured is the well-known tv report of  “Los Hombres de Lucho” which speaks of how the men “in the shadow” of coach Luis Enrique worked during his time at FC Barcelona since the 2014/2015 season. Until 2016/2017.

The report exposes the importance of the work carried out by those responsible for the analysis department, both in training sessions, matches already played, or live matches, where, for example, they monitor and edit shots in real time to give the coach another vision of the game. and make decisions supplemented by this point of view.

The department is made up of four analysts and their coordinator, making a total of five. Each of these analysts has a series of different functions: three of the analysts are in charge of analyzing every day all the rivals of the three different competitions in which Barcelona compete, and the fourth is in charge of recording and analyzing the team during training sessions and games. All of this is supervised by the fifth member of the department who is the assistant coach, allowing for fluid communication between the coach and the analysis department.

At MBP School of Coaches we understand that more and more, having a well-structured Scouting and Video-Analysis department with trained professionals who perfectly understand the game, is essential in high performance to empower the team and of course the players.