What English scouts are taught to look for - and what it means for your child

Anyone who has spotted a scout on the touchline has wondered what they're actually looking for. It's tempting to assume it's the step-overs, the goals or the biggest child on the pitch. According to the man who designed the courses English scouts are trained on, the answer is more complicated than that - and, for a lot of children, more forgiving.

Richard Allen is the former Head of Talent ID at the FA, former Head of Recruitment at Tottenham and former Academy Director at QPR, and he created the original talent ID courses for scouts in England. When he joined us on Project Footballer, he walked through what scouts are taught to look for, where clubs still get it wrong, and how Harry Kane came to be signed by Tottenham.

Four corners, not one

Richard described talent as a combination of technical, tactical, physical and psychological and social qualities. In his view a player has to be technically very good, needs strong game understanding and has to be physically capable - usually with at least one outstanding physical attribute, most likely speed or agility. No single quality is enough on its own.

What makes it so hard, he explained, is that the combinations are endless. One player might be quick enough to get by on pace. Another might be slower but technically better, with a brain that works faster than everyone else's, so they find space. As he put it, "I don't have a crystal ball that I can go and say this player is going to make it."

Where he puts the most weight is on what goes on in a player's head. Talking about players at the very top, he said "the difference, I think, between good and great is up in your head". The psychological and social side - resilience, determination, love of the game, how a child reacts when things go wrong - is what he believes scouts need to be trained to notice.

What scouts are taught first

Richard was clear about the fundamentals. Scouts, he said, "have to understand about performance versus potential". They also need to understand the relative age effect, the impact of maturation - physical and psychological - and their own unconscious bias.

Performance is what a child does on the day. Potential is what they might become. A child who dominates at nine might simply be older, bigger or more experienced than the others, and Richard said scouts always have to ask exactly that question about the obvious standouts. On bias, he was refreshingly frank: everyone has it, because of how we've been brought up. One example he gave was the player who simply looks the part - the right body shape, the right way of moving - which can catch a scout's eye whether or not it reflects real potential.

His practical fix is simple: slow down, and gather different views rather than going on gut feeling alone.

Wow moments, intent and the less obvious player

At Tottenham, Richard said, the scouting form for younger players asked whether there had been a wow moment. At those ages the club deliberately favoured children who could get on the ball, stay on it and win one-v-ones. Passing could be taught later; in his view, a child can't suddenly become a dribbler at 13.

But he was just as clear about the danger of reading "technical" too literally. Football is complex, and players also need to receive the ball, pass it and make good decisions. For Richard, the best scouts are the ones who can pick out the less obvious player: the child who keeps wanting the ball after losing it, who understands the game, whose movement off the ball is good even when nobody passes to them.

He told the story of a young Ryan Mason, whom a coach wanted to release during a camp because he kept giving the ball away. He was tiny. The pass he chose was right and the timing was right - he just couldn't kick it far enough yet. "So the intent was right, but he just physically wasn't able to do it." Richard and his colleagues argued to keep him in the system and give him time.

How Harry Kane was signed

Richard's Harry Kane story is a useful antidote to the idea that great players are obvious from day one. Kane had been at Tottenham briefly at a young age before going to Arsenal. When his time there ended at around under-11, the Tottenham scout who knew his family was still in touch, and he came in for a six-week trial.

Tottenham didn't take him straight away. He went on trial at Watford, came back, and only then did the club decide. Richard described a late-maturing player, one of the youngest in his group, who was struggling physically and probably wouldn't have fitted every club's profile. What tipped it were his traits: he loved the game, was obsessed with practice, could strike a ball really well and could score goals. Tottenham were also running a project on the relative age effect at the time, and as one of the youngest in his year, he was given the benefit of the doubt.

Even then, Richard said, Kane was regularly in the conversation at retain-and-release time and kept being given a bit longer. To anyone who now claims they always knew he'd be a top player, Richard's answer was blunt: "Honestly, nobody did."

Birthdays, age groups and the benefit of the doubt

Richard pointed out that even at the European Championship there were still more players born early in the selection year than late - and, in his words, the bigger problem is the children who never got into the system in the first place. At the FA, the under-15 England camps he described were split by birth quarter, with roughly equal numbers in each, to balance that out.

He also challenged the obsession with playing up. At Tottenham, the idea was that a child might move between age groups depending on what was right for them, and playing a year down wasn't a failure. He said Ryan Mason and Tom Carroll were both still playing in younger age groups well into their teens before moving up and going on to play in the Premier League.

The thread running through all of it is patience. His advice to the people he works with is that if you're unsure about a young player, keep them: "if you're not sure I would sign them".

Our take

What stands out is how much of scouting is educated judgement rather than certainty. Even the people who designed the system say they can't predict who will make it, and Richard was honest that clubs face real constraints - budgets, squad numbers and the pressure to win - that make patience harder than it sounds.

For parents, that cuts both ways. A scout's interest isn't a guarantee, and a "no" isn't a verdict on your child's future. What scouts are trained to look for - love of the game, resilience, decision-making, a willingness to keep trying - are qualities that grow best when a child is enjoying their football, not when they're performing for a watching adult.

What parents can do

Think potential, not this weekend. One game says little. If your child is younger or smaller than their teammates, their performance today may not reflect what they'll be capable of later.

Let them keep the ball. Richard's view is that dribbling and being comfortable on the ball are best learned young. Encourage them to try things, even when it doesn't come off.

Notice how they respond to mistakes. Scouts are trained to look at what happens after a child loses the ball. Praise the bounce-back, not just the goal.

Don't fixate on playing up. Playing in the right age group for their development matters more than playing in the oldest one.

Value the love of practice. The trait Richard kept coming back to with Kane was how much he wanted to practise. You can't force that - but you can protect the enjoyment that feeds it.

Treat a "no" as one opinion. Kane wasn't signed on his first trial. Club decisions are a snapshot, made with limited information.