How FC Utrecht Use Wyscout

To be com­pet­i­tive in the trans­fer mar­ket, to unearth the next stream of tal­ent, and to max­imise the club’s invest­ments — these are the aims of Dutch Eredivisie side FC Utrecht.

We met with Chief Scout Alje Schut, to learn how his club takes advan­tage of data and video analy­sis tools to achieve these goals using the Wyscout Scouting Area.

Evidence in reports

If a club has to rely heav­i­ly on videos and data — as Utrecht does — it’s crit­i­cal to have the tools, clear work­flows and defined met­rics to bet­ter eval­u­ate which play­ers may be the best fit for the team. Schut’s five-man recruit­ment team use the new Wyscout Scouting Area to report on a wide range of leagues and players.

“It’s crit­i­cal for us to cov­er every­thing,” said Alje.​“We use data and video in Wyscout to report on all the play­ers we watch. If one of my scouts sees a play­er with good 1v1 skills or that can cross well, I ask him to go into reports in the Scouting Area to cut clips of footage that show me — as a Chief Scout — why he thinks that play­er is so good. This is also use­ful for our coach and tech­ni­cal direc­tors, as they don’t have much time to look at reports and this makes every­thing eas­i­er and sim­pler for every­one. This way, every­one gets an idea of the type of play­er we’re talk­ing about.”

Scouting solution

FC Utrecht has a very defined work­flow as to how they use Wyscout, that allows Schut and his team to have every­thing at hand, focus­ing on the play­ers that mat­ter the most.

“We watch all the play­ers through the Playlist tool,” said Schut.​“Then if they are good enough, we add them into Shadow Teams, where we can watch them dis­played on the pitch. This allows us to have every­thing at hand and to watch clips and get infor­ma­tion when need­ed. It’s a good solu­tion for us — every­thing we need in one place — and it allows us to know what we’re look­ing for as a club.”

“For us, it’s very impor­tant to use the Scouting Area because it allows us to use video and put them into reports. As a scout­ing team, we want our coach and our direc­tors to be aligned with us, and we want them to have a clear image of the play­ers that we scout­ed and we think are good enough for the team.”

“The Scouting Area helps us get the right judg­ment from the coach and the tech­ni­cal direc­tor. Because if we are the only ones that have seen the play­er — and nei­ther of them has, and they don’t have a clear idea of the play­er — we like­ly won’t sign him.”

Seamless solu­tions

As Schut explained, Utrecht’s recruit­ment team has to max­i­mize time invest­ments on live scout­ing, mak­ing sure to watch live match­es that mat­ter. This can be help­ful for ulti­mate­ly sign­ing the right play­ers. And thanks to tech­nol­o­gy, Schut’s team can also save time when report­ing on play­ers on the pitch.

“With the Scouting Area app I can select cer­tain play­ers, add them to the line­up and write down com­ments dur­ing the game, maybe at half­time, and add some more com­ments after the game. Everything’s linked to the sys­tem, so when I get back to the hotel it will only take me 10 min­utes to fin­ish my reports.

“When I didn’t have the app, I used to write every­thing down in my notes. It took a lot of time and I often had to take my eyes off the pitch. Then I had to get back to the hotel and fill every­thing in the plat­form. Now, almost every piece of infor­ma­tion is already there, through the app. It makes our life easier.”