12 Aug 2017 09:14:22
Good day Ed's
Apologies if this has been covered or if its a silly question.
How does a scout manage to find personal info on an interested target for e.g before united signed Dong Fangzhuo how does the agent go about finding out what type of character he is outside of football to ensure that it's aligned to uniteds culture etc.
Thanks in advance.
{Ed001's Note - it really depends and varies from club to club and scout to scout. In the old days the scouts would watch them in training, go along and meet their families and speak to their friends. These days it is not as easy to speak to the families and friends, though they do still use another old time trick of going to away games and getting in with the fans of that team. Away fans tend to be more of a hardcore bunch than the home fans, they usually have little snippets of stories about the player's behaviour off the pitch.
I know one scout who keeps close ties with night clubs in the area he covers, to find out any incidents of misbehaviour etc.
Mostly in this era though, it is social media mining that provides the data. There are a couple of companies that just sift through social media accounts, both the players and other peoples', looking for information about them. Hence why the homophobic comments from Andre Gray came to light, even though they were made many years ago. It was because he was being checked out by an interested club.}
12 Aug 2017 11:22:55
Thanks for your prompt repsonse Ed.
{Ed001's Note - welcome.}