Enhance your scouting skills with the Football Action Framework

To become a high-quality football scout, breaking down and analyzing player actions with high precision is crucial. Evaluating a player is the sum of accurately evaluating many of his football actions.

In our previous newsletter, we shared (part of) a framework for analyzing a football action in great detail. Every completed football action goes through four stages: communication, decision ‘what,’ decision ‘how,’ and ‘execution.’ 

In this newsletter, we want to introduce an extension to this framework. As a scout, this extension can help you be even more specific in understanding and describing football actions.

The final two stages of every football action - decision ‘how’ and execution - both consist of four time-space characteristics. This sounds complex, but it isn’t. 

Every decision ‘how’ (phase three) and every execution (phase four) of a football action consist of a unique position, moment, direction, and speed.

• Position: where on the field the action begins.

• Moment: when the action is initiated, timing is crucial.

• Direction: the action's path, such as the angle of a pass or run.

• Speed: the velocity at which the action is performed.

If you, as a scout, can identify the time-space characteristics within every football action, it will massively help you better estimate the level, strengths, and weaknesses of every player you see in many football actions.

Read a more detailed explanation of the four characteristics on our blog.

Ready to take your scouting skills to the next level?

If you want to become a better football scout, our Video Scouting Insights course is designed for you. It consists of three lectures. The first dives deeply into the Football Action Framework, as explained above. 

The second lecture will discuss player roles within a team context, and the third will discuss effective reporting. The course also includes assignments you can complete at your own pace and receive personalized feedback. 

We still have open spots in the courses starting in September, October, and November. The courses are limited to 12 participants to ensure interaction and personalized attention, so don’t wait too long to enroll. All the details about the course can be found here. 

Best regards,

Marco van der Heide, 

Founder of 360 Scouting