How to become a good U20/NT scout

This guide could be really interesting if you want to become a good U20/NT scout, or to learn how things work.

It's written by El_Gigios-Fights (5797550), NT Norge headscout and former Italy U20 headscout.

Few people know that a lot of U20/NT managers need help, and one of the most difficult thing to do is to teach to the new scouts how to go about their job. This process takes some time, and isn't easy to do.
For this reason, I wrote this guide for the U20.

The guide will be divided into 2 parts, in the first part we'll analyze what exactly is a scouting staff, the 2nd part we'll talk about what you have to do to do a good job!

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FIRST PART - intro

Any U20/NT obviously is depending on his elected coach, who's the only manager that can enroll/release players and send lineup orders.
Any coach can create a scouting staff to help him in his job, and to give him advise - feedback and opinions.
The staff members can be a lot of people, or few people, the number usually depends on how big the country is. Obviously Italy or Deutschland will need more people than Kampuchea or Cuba.

Usually, a staff can have:

- U20/NT coach
- assistant coach
- Head scout(s)
- Tactical helpers
- Scouts
- Apprentice scouts

The scouting staff is usually divided into 5 groups, one for any position; any group can have: head scout, scouts and apprentice scouts (depending on how many players you need to check in U20/NT).
I would like to spend some work about the "apprentice scouts" because it should be the first job for any new scout.
They should be managers who're available to work but that should learn what they have to do, and how they should do it, helping scouts in various way, for example with researches about transferlisted players, players in tracker (but still now known) and looking at statistics (the best players, according to HT).
This work isn't so easy but with some time and being interested to learn it's a job that any manager can do.

Any scout is important in his staff but he has to remember that he has to follow U20/NT coach ideas, and for anything he should do what the boss asks to do; for any doubt, he has to ask him what to do because at the end it's just the boss who got critics and who wants to apply his ideas (he's voted in to do that).
Any wrong decision can be bad for U20/NT, and a U20/NT coach is normally more experienced than anyone else. A common mistake is to think to be able to take decisions by yourself, and this is something you can't do.

There's no minimun time required to be a scout, what is more important is to connect regularly to hattrick and to be ready to reply to htmails. It's better to spend 30 minutes daily than 5 hours just on a weekday.

One of the most important thing is to know that as scout you don't have to do too much in the first days; if you've been just hired, you have not enough experience and you have to start to learn and gain experience following instructions. Don't forget that Rome wasn't built in a day.


SECOND PART - searches

Research is the basis of scouting.
Each national team that you see was created after a thorough research work by the scouts.

If we receive the scouting role in an emerging national team or in a country where there's not a history of past scouting and where you have to start from zero, the research become even more important.

In any case, even in a national team where scouting is already well started, the research must be done with care and consistently; otherwise it does not affect the immediate future but may create a kind of “generational gap" that will cause problems in the future team.

For example: if you have to search a 23 years old wing for our NT and you will lose a potential future champ, nobody (unless there will be the chance to find him out on the market or to receive a report by the owner) will ever notice him ... This will mean that the player could not be trained well or it could become a BOT, in both cases he'll be lost.

Searches are themselves divided into 3 types, all very important and all necessary for the proper working of the scouting:

- Researches on the tracker
- Researches on Alltid.org (before, now "Top players" search in hattrick)
- Researches on transferlisted players


THIRD PART - tracker (http://www.ht-world.org)

Not to be confused with a national Database (an excel file or something similar where we combine all the players followed, and those of U20, of NT and of Youth Project, which scouts weekly update).

The tracker combines all reports of players eligible candidates of NT and U20. The national managers set minimum requirements for the players that could be added; this to avoid having, for example, thousands of 17 year olds with primary skill inadequate or passable.
Established these requirements, there are 2 ways to enter a player in tracker:

The first, the most common, is when an owner log in, and the site automatically add all players who have the minimum requirements in the tracker...by this time on those players will be in the tracker and scouts will be able to review the data.

The second way is to insert the player manual and this can only be done by the scouts.
If you find a player you think is interesting, you can manually add him into the tracker but you will not see his skills until the owner decides to log in to the tracker.
When a scout manually adds a player on sale, skills are automatically added into the tracker without the need to wait for the owner log in.

What you see in the tracker: about a player whose owner has logged in, you can see almost everything:

- All skills
- Of course, such data usually already visible like personality, stamina, form, tsi, etc..
- The coach of the owner
- Percentage of training and stamina
- Number of assistant coaches
- Player position in games played.

Access to the tracker is given only by national coach or a chief scout; to enter, once you've been granted access, just go to the restricted area and enter id and password.

When you'll be logged in, you'll find a lot of functions; I will explain the main ones:

Research:
Clicking on "DB Player", you will enter a page with the search form.
It's very simple and intuitive: based on what you're looking for, select the age range and skill min. and max. (suggest to set always divine as max).
By clicking on "search" you will be provided a list of all players with these requirements.

Creating scouting list:
When you find an interesting player you can add him in a list of favorites called scouting list. The inclusion of a player is very simple, you open the player page and select "Add this player to my Scouting List." From that moment on, the player is added in the first scouting list (by default named A, but you can customize it at will).
A Scouting List (SL from now on) is very useful, keeps certain players monitored and follows their progress every time that owners update the data.
It also allows you to see when they are on sale and when they are "dying" (the owners become bot), because a sign will pop up then.
When an owner won't log in for few weeks to HT the player first is highlighted in orange and then red, this means his team is going to become a bot and then the player may be lost, in this case you have to immediately alert the national coach.

Adding a player manually:
Click on "Add Player", write again your password, the username and the id of the player.
It also appears a drop down menu where you can set what kind of player is, the entries are various, then clicking on "Log in" you will add manually the player.

At this point you'll find out the player directly in your SL but, of course, without skills. You will see them only if and when the owner will log to the tracker, even for this, one of the essential qualities for a good scout is the ability to interact with the owners.

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The tracker is the fundamental tool for scouting, a good scout constantly connects to the tracker to check the status of players in his SL, to research and see who updated data and who has not.

I want to clarify that reading this HP will not make you a scout and you won't automatically be added into a national staff, if you feel ready to try to enter in a staff you must directly ask to the chief scout of the national team in which you want to work, also knowing that methods used in the scouting of other nations, could be slightly different from those described in this manual.

I therefore recommend always starting from the lowest step and observe the more experienced, because only practicing you can become a true scout.


A special thanks, for his translation help, to Ghigno (10735102)

Please feel free to join our discussion here: (15559979.1)

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