International Scouting

I've recently been thinking that scouting when you're in charge of a national side could do with fine-tuning. It seems to me that when you send off your national team staff to check out a specific competition or country, they'll only come back with reports on players who are currently in the squad. Surely they should be feeding back on anyone who could represent the country you're in charge of? I find this can get very frustrating, especially if you're in charge of a club as well. Let me explain...

Whilst in charge of Liverpool, I had a spell in charge of England. Obviously, I had the likes of Rooney, Gerrard, Ferdinand and Terry in the team. I only ever got scouting reports on players who were in my current squad, and were at Liverpool, Chelsea or Manchester United. Now, the reports on the Liverpool players were pointless to start with, because I can tell how they're playing myself - I'm their club manager after all! But I wasn't told at any stage that Joe Mattock, for example, had moved to Portsmouth (and later Arsenal), was playing regularly, and playing well! It was only after one of my Liverpool games against Portsmouth when I realised this.

Similarly, I am now in charge of Brazil, and have sent one of my coaches to check on players who play in the Champions League (amongst other competitions). I have only had reports on four players all season, two at Real Madrid, plus Anderson (Man Utd) and Adriano (Sevilla). So they're obviously only going to matches involving two or three teams.

My point is this: instead of reporting back on the same regular players every week, saying "They're an important part of the international setup",why can't there be more reports saying something along the lines of "Hey, I went to such-and-such a game this week, and this player really impressed me - I think he'd be a good addition to the national squad for the next game", or "So-and-so's in good form at the moment, and I notice he's not the squad - maybe you should consider him".

That's my personal opinion. Does anyone share it?

yeah i agree with you totally on this.

Seems sensible to me

The main thing I'd like for scouting to improve upon is the selection of games scouts attend. This applies to club scouts too, but if you're England manager and you send two scouts to watch Premier league games, they'll both go and watch the same match. It's frustrating, because ideally, you'd want them to cover a wider range of clubs and players. Also, I'd love it if, for the international squad, if they reported on every national-team qualified player involved, and not just the ones with a high enough rep that you pretty much know how good they are anyway. If you're watching a Premier League match for three international stars, you should get feedback on the other qualified players too. Especially players who've been capped at U-21 and U-19 level, who get ignored at the moment.

Yep, just send 2 scouts to the WC and every time they came back with exact the same players. I would think they would go see other matches tbh.

This is still happening on the new game. It's always been a nuisance for me - as someone who doesn't pick up every edition it's something I'd have thought would have been sorted out by now.

For example, in the World Cup, there are three matches a day in the group stage - so why do all three scouts assigned to the tournament go to the same one each day?