Start your scouting journey – completely free
Free Football Scouting Course
Learn proven scouting strategies and use professional scouting report templates
✓ Understand how professional clubs organize their scouting strategies and identify talent
✓ Learn how to break down and evaluate players on every position and report your findings
✓ Access and download professional templates used for well-structured scouting reports
Course overview
Marco van der Heide, a former professional football player and founder of 360 Scouting, brings nearly a decade of hands-on experience working with top-tier clubs. He shares his expertise in scouting.
Discover the core building blocks of professional scouting. You’ll learn how top clubs structure their scouting operations, and get hands-on with industry-standard templates for scouting reports. By the end, you’ll understand the fundamentals that separate casual observers from serious scouts.
All lessons are available on-demand, so you can learn whenever it suits you. Work through the lessons at your own pace, spend as much time as you need practicing with templates, and re-read content whenever you need clarification.
Excited to go deeper? This free course is just your starting point. Once you’ve completed it, you’ll be ready to explore our Essentials course (the complete beginner program) or jump into more advanced training. Many scouts continue their development in our Pro course or join our Academy membership for ongoing mentorship, live Q&As, and monthly masterclasses with top professionals.
How you benefit
Understand how professional clubs organize their scouting
Learn from an industry expert with 10+ years of experience
Gain access to professional scouting report templates
Build real-world experience with practice and assignments
Who is this course for?
Aspiring scouts worldwide
This free scouting course is perfect for anyone interested in becoming a professional football scout. Whether you’re just starting out or want to explore scouting before committing to paid training, this course offers a genuine introduction with no barriers.
You don’t need previous experience, a professional football background, or specialized knowledge. All you need is a passion for football and a willingness to learn how professional scouts work.
What is included in this football scouting course?
Free video lesson
Discover different scouting strategies
Every professional club has a scouting strategy – a systematic way of identifying talent, evaluating players, and building squads. Understanding these strategies is essential if you want to think like a professional scout.
In this lesson, you’ll learn the three main scouting approaches used by clubs worldwide. You’ll discover how some clubs organize their scouts by league or region, how others use a funnel system to narrow down thousands of players into key targets, and how some specialize scouts by position.
Football scouting report templates
Free access to our template library
You’ll get access to 12 professional scouting report templates available in PowerPoint and Google Presentations: fully customizable, easy to fill in, and ready to download and use immediately (or export them as a PDF).
The templates are organized into three categories: 8 position-specific templates, 3 general report templates, and 1 match report template.
You’ll learn how to use each template professionally, choosing the right framework, writing clear and specific reports, using rating systems effectively, and presenting your analysis like a real scout.
Evaluate every action in detail
Analyze a player like a pro
In one of the modules in this free course, you’ll learn more about how to evaluate every football action that players perform on the pitch in great detail.
By distinguishing four phases and four time-space characteristics within every football action, you’ll not only gather more information from what you see, but can also present your findings more clearly.
Taught by an industry expert
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 360 Scouting
Course program
This module elaborates on how clubs organize their scouting processes, and which role scouts play in that.
This module explains how to evaluate football actions, how to structure player evaluations and how to write reports.
This module breaks down every position into main competencies and provides templates to create reports.
This module explains which next steps you can take at 360 Scouting to become a (better) scout.
Questions?
We are here to help you
Check out all our football scouting courses
Turn your football passion into a professional scouting career: modern curriculum, professional club network at every level, proven track record.