[ Background ]

From the very beginning, I knew I was going to work in sports. That was my main goal throughout my whole life.

I started university in 2018 and had to decide what to study. In Poland football degree programs are not really developed or available yet. I decided to focus on languages, I had always learned languages quite easily - especially the romance languages - I’d been speaking Spanish since I was 13 and speak it better than English! So I decided to pick another language at University and started with Italian, thinking another language could be really helpful in the job market.

At that time, my dream was to be a journalist. In addition to football, I followed many sports like ice hockey, cycling, biathlon and ski jumping. At some point though I thought it would be better to specialize.

To get started, I did some voluntary jobs in media and focused on writing to build my portfolio.

[ StadiumDB and Journalism ]

Each year, during the breaks between school years, I went to Norway to do physical work and earn money to live on my own after my bachelor’s degree. Then in 2021 in Norway, I got an offer from StadiumDB - a site about football stadiums. I decided to join them and help them progress. I was working on their YouTube channel, writing scripts for the videos, articles for the site, translating and going to stadiums to take pictures and write about them.

After a year - all of 2022 - I knew that I won’t be a journalist! The way of working in that industry didn’t really fit into my goals in life. If it’s 11pm and there’s hot news, we have to write an article. Still, I developed my English, especially my English writing, and was able to broaden my horizons a lot but when I left I was sure, it wasn’t for me.

I chose to have a ‘normal’ job again. Still, I wanted to have some kind of ‘advantage’ so I decided to work in logistics but for a company where I work in Spanish and English on a daily basis. To have a base and a regular 8-4 job here in Poland, it’s like a miracle for me. This job in journalism, at the beginning it was a dream come true. I love stadiums, I love groundhopping, sometimes I just go to lower league games just to enjoy the atmosphere - and I started with scouting again as a hobby.

I thought my experience writing could help me succeed as a scout because you have to write reports and present players in a good way. I had a feeling I could do that well and now I have more time to attend matches in the evening and on the weekend.

[ Getting started in scouting ]

Although, at the beginning, scouting was my ‘second option’, to develop as a journalist and grow my knowledge of the game, I had to do something with scouting. When I started with journalism in 2020, I also did an internship as a voluntary scout at Siarka Tarnobrzeg in the 4th tier of Polish football. I spent a year there but there was no chance of getting a contract because the club had no money. Still, it helped me develop a range of contacts, my first contacts in football really.

Next, I contacted the club I support, GKS Tychy - I had met a few people there from attending matches. Because I was in Norway at the time, I started scouting the Scandinavian market for the club.

I thought if I spend a year or two at a club, they’ll offer me a contract and I’ll be a successful football scout - unfortunately, it’s not like that. It’s very difficult to get a paid offer as a scout. The scouting ‘industry’ in Poland is not very developed and I know some examples of clubs without even one part-time scout - not even volunteers! They rely heavily on agents and connections - which can make it a very dirty industry.

I attended a conference about scouting in Poland - the first ever in Warsaw - and met a guy in charge of the scouting team at Stomil Olsztyn in the 3rd tier of Polish football. He used to play in the 2nd division as well and he gave me really the best advice and we started working together. He was happy with my progress but the club got relegated and they had too many scouts so everyone got sacked suddenly!

He moved to Polonia Warsaw, and offered me a contract. After 3 years purely volunteering, doing reports, attending games, not even being paid for the tickets - it’s the first contract where I can earn something in football. That’s how it works here in Poland, it’s changing but we need new people, new ideas to push things further.

I started at Polonia in February this year and I’m really happy, it’s the best thing I could do. I had another offer from a club in the same league but I trust this guy and I believe in him and the project. Now, we’re scouting the entire European market with 6 scouts - most of us are still voluntary but we can get paid if they sign a player from our recommendation - we signed a Spanish player on my recommendation for example.

We started the season badly with only 1 point after 5 games but then the Spanish player started playing, provided a few assists and helped the club to a 4 match win streak!

[ When you first got into scouting, did you do any qualifications? ]

At the very beginning. I didn't do any because I was working with a 4th division team and they didn’t require anything. It was just beginners at that time, there weren’t any clubs at that level in 2020 that had a scouting department, so we were kind of new. I thought, let’s see if this experience can help me become a more successful journalist.

Later on, I did some of the PFSA courses and started to attend conferences. There is a talent ID course from the Polish FA now since last year or so. I’m interested in the course but to be honest, it’s quite expensive and you have to ask yourself about the return. Probably 80-90% of people taking the course don’t earn even one złoty (as a scout). It’s an investment. I’m trying to get the club to finance it for me. I think that it’s important in a developing and growing market (like scouting) to ask for things. If they’re happy with my work and I can show my skills and be proactive, they might do it. That’s my plan for now.

[ Sounds like you’re mostly doing player scouting (e.g. for transfers) or are you also doing opposition scouting and/or other types of scouting? ]

Yeah, it’s always player scouting. There are people in the club full time, based in Warsaw, who do the opposition analysis.

The Chief Scout is also in Warsaw and much of the team is there but I’m based in Katowice and we have someone in Scotland, in Italy and a few others scouting different markets - all Polish though.

I’m really happy doing player scouting. We are using data and have made our own data ranges and percentages to sort the players, or filter players and then you can make a list for more detailed observation. I’ve never had the opportunity to do this before and I feel spending some time to analyze the data and then writing a report about what you’ve seen is really helping my development.

[ How does an ‘assignment’ actually work? Does the chief scout give you a list of players or games to watch - what instructions do you get? ]

Normally you don’t get a specific game you should attend. I’m trying to be proactive and look at our needs.

Inside Poland for example, I know the 1st, 2nd and 5th tiers really well but don’t know about the 3rd and 4th tiers because I’ve been scouting outside Poland and the lower leagues as part of another project I’m doing. So my main emphasis right now is on those leagues. Every scout at Polonia Warsaw has been assigned with one group of each 4th tier in Poland. During the scouting process we are looking for under 19 players, in particular.

When it comes to players in leagues from Spain or Norway or Sweden, they assign those players to me - and because I speak very good Spanish, they gave me the Spanish lower leagues. We divide the regions - there’s a guy for the Balkans, a guy for the Baltics and so on.

I really like the leagues in Norway and Sweden and they produce players who can have a big impact in the 1st and 2nd division. We can see the results at Lech Poznan for example, they’re top of the table in Poland and have many players from Scandinavia performing well. These leagues are very hot in the market right now - and they are important for the January transfer window because the contracts end at the end of the year.

We also have an emphasis on youth leagues here in Poland but in my region there aren’t too many (teams) so I’m mostly watching those games on video. I’m trying to balance video and live scouting, like both but my main focus is on live scouting. Obviously I have to do video scouting for the matches in Spain for example, but I like going to matches - and you can meet people and network as well. Sometimes I meet people on LinkedIn and we meet at games here in the region. If I have the opportunity and some free time, I set my schedule to see as many games as possible to increase my knowledge of certain teams and leagues.

[ How many times do you watch a player before you recommend them? What's the next step after you recommend a player? ]

Normally, I'd like to see them 3 times. If I have an opportunity, I’d see them live at least once and twice on video, against a strong team and a weaker team and then of course highlights and clips from other matches on Wyscout for example.

Usually there are so many players (to watch) but now it’s easier because there are not so many players running out of contract in December. Last transfer window (summer 2024) for example, in Spain - maybe 70 or 80% of players in the lower leagues have a one year contract. In the 4th tier you have 5 leagues of 20 teams - so maybe around 2,000 players who might be available! We might be looking for 2 or 3 players to strengthen our team, so to find a hidden gem you have to watch a ton of matches - but you don’t have time to watch everyone 3 times. To avoid such problems, in our daily work, we use data to filter our watch list before we watch the player in a match.

[ How do you ensure the players you scout and recommend are feasible transfers financially for Polonia Warsaw? ]

We know that the 3rd tiers in Spain and Portugal normally don’t pay very highly and we have a lot of success stories here in Poland about these players. Sometimes we can find the exact salary and that makes it much easier to negotiate with the players but basically every club in the Polish 2nd division can offer double what most Spanish teams in the 3rd and 4th tier can pay.

We also have an advantage because Polonia is based in Warsaw and it’s a club with a history of championships in the past. Poland is also probably an exception in European football because you only have one team from the capital city in the top division. In Kraków, for example, there are 5 teams in the top 3 tiers - in Warsaw, it’s only 2, Polonia and Legia.

[ Who signs off on a transfer? Are you involved at this stage? ]

It's always the Sporting Director - I'm 2 levels below him. I report to the Chief Scout. We have weekly meetings where we compare players on top of everyone’s shortlist and try to ‘stackrank’ them in order - e.g. ‘target #1’, ‘target #2’, etc.

Then we try to get some insights about their personality, their life, the agent and so on. We had a really good right back we were about to sign last winter on deadline day. He’d gotten positive reports from me, from the chief scout, from the sporting director and had played in Ligue 2 in France but was without a club now. He wasn’t demanding a lot of money, so we could do the transfer but we wanted to find out why he was without a club and started to dig. Just before we made the offer (it was transfer deadline day), we discovered that he had a history of missing training and even disappearing from time to time! So even though he had enough ability, we decided he wasn’t suitable for the club.

At the club, the chief scout is like an assistant to the sporting director, and he often makes the first contact. Sometimes the scout could be involved as well. For example, in the transfer of the Spanish player Dani Vega - I was the only one at the club who spoke Spanish so I was involved in the negotiations and translating. I was at a festival and got the call that they needed me to help with the negotiations! Now I have some knowledge about how these negotiations go. That was probably the best experience of my scouting journey so far.

[ How early do you start planning for future transfer windows? ]

We divide the year in ‘semesters’, one for the summer transfer window and one for the winter window. After the summer deadline we started to focus on the winter transfer window. It’s not ‘easier’ but it’s fast because there are not as many leagues involved.

In Poland we are allowed only 2 players from outside the European Union, so we are focusing on players with EU passports. Still, I’m also scouting the Canadian league on a voluntary basis to develop myself and get knowledge of other leagues - and in Canada, there are many players with EU passports. Currently as well, there’s a policy with Ukrainians, they can be registered as a Polish player so it’s a big plus.

Anyway, there are maybe only 15 or 16 leagues worldwide with contracts finishing in December, if we start early we can get a lot of knowledge about those players and we can make the first step. We want to finish the whole process in November and have all the shortlists and reports made for all the players we want to sign.

For the summer window, there are many (like thousands and thousands) more players and we’re just 5 or 6 people right now! Last summer we also got a new coach and completely changed the structure of play - we had to find players suitable for this formation and style of play, so our earlier shortlists weren’t very relevant at the moment but that’s some knowledge for the future.

[ The people you meet at matches - what is networking like? Surely there’s some degree of secrecy about your work but would another scout ever say, ‘hey, you should look at X player?’ ]

From time to time but right now, not really - it’s written in my contract that I can’t (share info on players)!

But I’m also involved in another project Moja i Twoja Piłka - translated, it means ‘my and your football’ - where we scout lower leagues in Poland. I scouted a Colombian guy for example, he played professional football in Colombia and he got an ‘invisible offer’ from a club in the Ekstraklasa and the agent disappeared and he ended up without money. He ended up playing in the 7th tier in Poland (!), I discovered him and we helped him move up to a better team.

Networking is especially helpful in the lower leagues because you don’t always have access to video, so there’s no other option except going to the game live. I really appreciate the 5th tier and there are many clubs in the Katowice region, so I go at least every other weekend to a match and I’ve found some hidden gems. Maybe they’re not suitable for Polonia Warsaw but I believe some of them could make a step up one or two tiers higher and I’m trying to work on that.

The connections really pay off here because those players normally don't have agents or they’re 17 from some small village outside Katowice just making their debut and no one knows them. With some connections and a good word, you can help a player very much.

Other connections are useful too. For example, because I’m not a football coach and I want to develop my understanding of the game more and more, I meet people who are ex-players, coaches, directors and they can point things out and share different insights on the game - I really appreciate that.

[ How many matches do you watch? ]

Since January this year, I’ve been to over 100 games live. It should have been even more but I’m only human! There’s also a long break in Poland in the winter and summer, so it doesn’t help getting your ‘score’ too high.

Whenever I plan a trip with friends or go somewhere, I’m always checking the matches - both from a groundhopping perspective and a scouting perspective. Once I went to Kraków to see a match in the 3rd tier but the match was called off and postponed so I decided to go to a match in the 8th tier - there were maybe 5 people at the match! There I saw a 16 year old center back, very tall and aggressive and doing magnificent things with the ball. I contacted him - he was so surprised someone came to see him - these are stories you can’t imagine what they could mean to someone. He’s 18 now and he’s playing in the 5th tier, I hope he can keep moving up!

Normally I try to get to 4 games live each week and I’ve probably seen about the same number on video. I’m trying to filter the games now because if I know a team playing near Katowice well, I shouldn’t go there because I know all the players and maybe should invest my time in video scouting for example. So it’s a matter of prioritizing my work - I could watch a player in Norway or Spain instead of watching the same team for the 3rd time in 3 weeks.

[ Are you building a ‘portfolio’ of players that you’ve identified and keeping an eye on? Is this important to keep track of? ]

It’s kind of like building a portfolio but I’m not really looking at it from that perspective. For me, it’s more important to gain as much knowledge and experience as I can from different perspectives in football. Whether I'm working with lower league clubs, scouting talent, or negotiating with presidents, it's all part of understanding how the game works. In five or six years, I want to be able to approach clubs from top leagues and confidently say, 'I've done this. I've been involved in different markets, like Spain and Scandinavia, and I know how to navigate football from multiple angles.' It’s about continuously learning and helping the club, while also developing on my own.