Become a better scout by recognizing these four phases in every football action

As a scout, you constantly evaluate players. It helps to be effective if you use several ‘lenses’ to watch football through. One of those lenses is a simple and understandable framework that improves your understanding of match situations. It significantly helps to rate the performance and potential of players more accurately. Let’s dive into this framework.

Four phases of every football action

Once you see it, you can never unsee it: every football action has the same four phases.

As a scout, evaluating players effectively means using various 'lenses' to understand match situations. One powerful framework is recognizing the four phases in every football action, as detailed by Raymond Verheijen.

The Four Phases:

1. Communication: Players exchange information with their environment. This includes:

   • Pointing where they want the ball.

   • Checking over their shoulder to gauge space.

   • Signaling to teammates about marking opponents or starting a run.

2. Decision (What): Players decide their next move based on collected info and game intelligence. Options include:

   • Dribbling.

   • Crossing.

   • Passing.

   • Shooting.

3. Decision (How): Players determine how to execute their chosen action. For example:

   • Speeding up a dribble diagonally to the left.

   • Delivering an out-swinging high cross to the second post.

   • Passing the ball on the ground to a teammate's right foot.

   • Curling a shot low into the far corner.

4. Execution: Finally, players try to execute their decisions as precisely as possible. Effective execution relies on the following:

   • Position.

   • Moment.

   • Direction.

   • Speed.

   The better the technique, the closer the execution will match the planned decision.

First, a player exchanges information with his environment. Then, he decides which football action he wants to perform. Next, he decides how to perform it. Finally, he executes his decision. 

Is it that simple? Yes and no.

Yes, because the more you look at football actions through this lens, the easier it gets to recognize those four phases.

And no, it’s very hard to know exactly which information a player collected and what a player decided, as we can not look into his brain.

Next time you watch a match, apply this framework to analyze football actions. Pause, rewind, and scrutinize interesting situations through these phases to enhance your scouting insights. Want to know more about this framework? Read a more detailed explanation of every phase on our blog.

Bring theory into practice

Do you want help really understanding and applying this framework? In our course Video Scouting Insights, we explain this framework among other ones, show video examples, and provide tasks to practice by watching matches. We give individual feedback on those tasks to help you improve your skills as a scout.

You will learn the theory of effective football scouting, gain real-life scouting experience, and increase your network. All the information about the course can be found here.

The first course, which starts this Monday, is completely filled, but we have a few open spots starting at the end of August (and another course starting in September). Don't miss out on this opportunity to advance your scouting career!

Best regards,

Marco van der Heide, founder of 360 Scouting