Kickstart your career as a football scout
Football Scouting Essentials
A comprehensive introduction to the essential foundations of football scouting
✓ Learn fundamental scouting concepts from an industry expert with 10+ years of experience
✓ Get hands-on experience with a scouting task: evaluating Santos winger Robinho Júnior
✓ Study at your own pace with lectures you can complete from home, whenever it suits you
✓ Receive a personalized certificate to showcase your expertise to potential employers
The program includes 10 online, on-demand video lectures and a practical assignment that mirrors a professional scouting task.
It is the best football scouting course for beginners and provides a comprehensive introduction to the essential foundations of scouting.
Course overview
Marco van der Heide, a former professional football player and founder of 360 Scouting, brings over a decade of hands-on experience working with top-tier clubs.
Based on our experiences at professional clubs, the course provides insights into how professional clubs operate, and how to analyze and report on players.
You can take the course in your own time, pause-and-continue when ever you want, and rewatch videos as often as you like. There are no live sessions, only on-demand video lectures and a scouting task.
Unlock the secrets of effective scouting, covering topics such as the coherence between data, video and live, scouting strategies clubs use, expertises scouts develop, the best ways to compile player reports, and tips to get into professional football as a scout.
Course trailer
How you benefit
Launch your
scouting career
Learn from an
industry expert
Master key
tools & concepts
Receive a
certificate
Who is this course for?
Beginning scouts worldwide
This scouting course is specifically designed for those who want to begin a career as a football scout. You will learn the fundamental concepts of scouting and the skills needed to excel in this field.
It doesn’t matter where you live or what your background is. All you need is a good understanding of English, a laptop with a reliable internet connection, and a passion for the game.
For those looking to advance their skills further, this course serves as an excellent foundation for our advanced Football Scouting Pro course, which builds upon the fundamental skills learned here.
Taught by an industry expert
With years of experience across various clubs, settings, and levels, Marco has deep knowledge of what it takes to excel as a scout. With 360 Scouting, he tested thousands of scouts and read countless reports, providing him with insights about what separates elite scouts from average ones.
Marco
van der Heide
Tutor of this course
Marco van der Heide is a former professional football player and the founder of 360 Scouting. After his active career, Marco has become a video scouting expert, spending thousands of hours analyzing matches and players.
For almost ten years, he has worked for professional clubs, individually or through 360 Scouting. At AZ Alkmaar, he reported to current Liverpool head coach Arne Slot as their opposition analyst. As a video scout, Marco worked for various clubs, ranging from Champions League teams to second-tier clubs.
What others say about Marco and this course
Get certified as football scout
For every graduate
Upon completion, each participant in this course receives a personalized certification, allowing them to demonstrate their expertise to potential employers.
This certification can be especially valuable when applying for specialized football scouting positions, as it provides concrete evidence of the acquired knowledge and skills.
Time investment
This program includes 10 online, on-demand lectures, which take approximately 2 hours to complete in total.
In addition, there is a scouting assignment that involves evaluating a player. This assignment, along with processing feedback, takes about 1.5 hours.
You can choose when and where to take the lessons and make the assignment, allowing you to learn quickly and conveniently.
Course program
The course begins by outlining the objective of scouting, highlighting its importance in assisting the sporting director and facilitating effective recruitment decisions. Scouts are responsible for identifying players who not only possess high quality but are also available and fit well with the club’s tactical and cultural values.
Lesson duration: 6 minutes.
Next, we explore player evaluation methods, presenting three main approaches: data scouting, video scouting, and live scouting. You will learn how to balance objectivity, context, and qualitative insights to form a complete picture of a player’s abilities. When used in combination, these methods enable scouts to evaluate talent holistically.
Lesson duration: 8 minutes
In the section on scouting strategies, we introduce three essential scouting methodologies. These strategies provide structured frameworks for identifying talent, from regional specialists building local networks to funnel-based approaches and positional experts.
Lesson duration: 9 minutes
Understanding the club’s organizational chart is crucial for scouts aiming to navigate the complexities of professional football. This module outlines the hierarchical structure, from scouts to the sporting director, and explains how recommendations flow through the system. You will gain insights into the decision-making processes that balance technical, financial, and strategic considerations.
Lesson duration: 4 minutes
To excel as a scout, you must be able to understand football actions thorougly. This lesson will explain how to analyze individual football actions effectively, from passing and pressing to marking and covering depth. By understanding this crucial element, scouts can evaluate players in the context of their roles and create a strong basis for effective reporting.
Lesson duration: 11 minutes
Understanding team tactics is essential for evaluating players during scouting. They reflect the coach’s strategic approach and significantly influence individual behaviors on the field. Scouts must understand these tactics, as players’ actions are shaped by collective goals and instructions. This lesson will teach you to analyze team contributions and strategies effectively.
Lesson duration: 11 minutes
Building on the tactical foundation established in the previous lessons, this course examines player positions and competencies, highlighting the unique skills required for each role on the pitch. Scouts will learn to identify players’ strengths, weaknesses, and positional fit to enhance team performance.
Lesson duration: 10 minutes
This lesson provides an overview of Wyscout, a top platform for video scouting in professional football. It highlights key features and shows how scouts can enhance player evaluation using extensive video scouting options. Understanding how to effectively use Wyscout is essential for the modern scout.
Lesson duration: 8 minutes
Effective communication is a vital skill for any scout, and the course addresses this in the module about reporting on players. You will learn to present your findings through player ratings, competency assessments, and written reports, ensuring that your insights are clear, structured, and actionable.
Lesson duration: 10 minutes
This lesson explores the steps and skills needed to become a scout. Whether or not you get a chance in professional football partly depends on luck, but can be heavily influenced by consistently showing quality in your work.
Lesson duration: 4 minutes
In this scouting task, you will evaluate Santos winger Robinho Júnior though the lens of an Ajax scout.
Based on individual clips of Robinho Júnior, you’ll estimate his current and potential, rate the main competencies on his position, and write a report on him.
After you submit your report, you will receive access to a scouting report created by Marco. This will allow you to compare your findings with his, along with video feedback on the assignment.
Frequently Asked Questions
This course will help aspiring football video scouts gain the skills and knowledge needed to kickstart their careers. It covers player evaluation, scouting strategies, and using professional tools like Wyscout.
Yes! This course is specifically designed for beginning scouts worldwide with no prior professional scouting experience.
It also serves as an ideal first step towards our advanced Football Scouting Pro course for those aspiring to become professional video scouts.
The course is led by Marco van der Heide, a former professional football player and experienced video scout with nearly a decade of experience working with top-tier clubs.
The Video Scouting Essentials course costs €39. Based on current exchange rates, this is around:
- $42
- £34
You can check out the exchange rates for other currency’s here.
We offer various payment options, including credit card, Google Pay and PayPal. If you don’t see a payment method you prefer, please email us at courses@360scouting.com, and we will do our best to accommodate your request.
After you make your payment via Stripe, we provide a straightforward 7-day money-back guarantee. If you’re unsatisfied with the course for any reason within those 7 days, we’ll refund your payment in full.
The refund process is simple; reach out to us and request your refund. There is no need to explain why. We’ll process your refund as soon as possible.
We’re confident in the value of our course, which is why we can offer this risk-free guarantee. It allows you to start learning with complete peace of mind.
As this course is on-demand, you can progress at your own pace. Most participants finish it at once or in a few days, taking breaks between lessons. But if you want, you can take more time.
The program consists of 10 on-demand video lectures that you can access anytime, allowing you to study at your own pace.
Watching the video lectures and reading the text below the videos takes about 1.5 to 2.5 hours. The scouting task takes about 1.5 hours. That makes 3-4 hours in total.
After completing the course, you can request a personalized certificate of completion with your name, which can help you showcase your skills to potential employers.
You only need a good understanding of English, a reliable internet connection, and the ambition to become a (better) football scout.
This Football Scouting Essentials course is your first step into the world of football scouting, covering fundamental concepts and techniques. The Football Scouting Pro course is a more advanced program designed for scouts ready to elevate their skills to a professional level, building directly on the foundations laid in the Essentials course. The Pro course goes into more detail in the theory lessons (6 hours in total) and contains more practice (14 hours in total).
Yes, technical support is available via email. For scouting issues, Marco will reply. Technical questions will be answered by Peter. You can use the email address courses@360scouting.com.
You need only an internet-connected device and a web browser. Accessing the course requires no specific software.
The course contains knowledge that elevates your level as a scout. You’ll also get better by performing the scouting task and reflecting on it by reading the feedback document.
At the same time, taking a 3-4 hour course is obviously no guarantee to immediately land a role in football. But the certificate you’ll receive definitely shows you are willing to learn, and with 360 Scouting, we are getting more and more well known among clubs.
The course equips you with essential skills and insights into professional scouting, providing a solid foundation to pursue opportunities in football clubs or related organizations.
Questions?
We are here to help you
Ready to take your scouting skills to the next level?
The Video Scouting Essentials course will teach you everything you need to kickstart your football scouting career.