Behind Spain’s European Championship and World Cup double over the past two years is a model that works, one that has been in place for a very long time, knows how to renew itself and continues to produce generations of great players. But there is also a huge amount of scouting. It may seem strange, given that we are talking about a national team, but the players coming through Spain’s representative sides, particularly the Under- teams, have not all been found in La Liga or the lower divisions. They have been found all over the world. As a report in Diário As reveals, maps are opened up every day in the Federation’s offices in Las Rozas, reaching ever further across the globe. Scouts are no longer sent only to regional leagues, but also to watch players in Switzerland, Italy and British academies.
There are now very few corners of the world beyond the reach of the Spanish Federation’s scouting network, one of the most advanced and envied systems in international football. The RFEF has made the search for eligible talent an increasingly important part of its work. The best-known example is probably Dean Huijsen. Born in Amsterdam, raised in Málaga and later passing through Juventus, the defender was being followed by Spain while he was still playing in Italy and had already made his debut for the Netherlands Under-17s. The Federation realised he was eligible, made contact with his representatives and brought him into its youth set-up before his eventual move to the senior team.
Huijsen is hardly an exception: Chichoro, now Spain’s Under-18 goalkeeper, had played for England Under-16s while at Manchester United, while Susoho, born in 2005, followed a similar path during his time in Manchester City’s academy. Ablaye Samb, now at Milan, was born in Luxembourg in 2009, has Senegalese roots and grew up in Formentera, enough to make his debut for Spain Under-17s. Then there is Ikenna Ikezzu, Swiss and of Nigerian descent, who plays for Zürich and has a Spanish grandfather; this year he made his debut for La Roja’s Under-16s. And there is Elijah Gift, who spent years growing up in England before moving to Athletic Club and was identified by the RFEF while he was at Liverpool.
The search is no longer confined to the places where Spanish football has traditionally looked for its players. The system rests on three things. The first is technology. The Federation works with huge databases of players and tools that allow it to monitor academy footballers around the world. Age, position, minutes played, performance, career path: the amount of information collected makes it possible to identify profiles that might otherwise never emerge through traditional scouting. The second is the network around the players themselves: agents and others who may know of a player who has slipped under the RFEF’s radar, perhaps because he plays abroad or no longer has close family ties to Spain. In some cases, they are the ones who alert the Federation to a player who could be eligible for La Roja.
The third is the clubs. Over the years, the RFEF has built relationships with academies and teams in different countries, and those relationships tend to generate others. Following one player can lead to another, while a contact at one club can open the door to new channels. The Federation does not have to start from scratch every time. A relationship with an academy can become a lasting source of information, opening up further contacts as new players come into view. Once a player has been identified, the RFEF begins checking the profile. When a name appears completely outside the radar, the first thing it does is ask for video, because in many cases there is very little information available.
The Federation has seven scouts specialising in talent identification, whose job is to filter an enormous amount of information and reduce it to a shortlist of players with a genuine chance of building an international career. The RFEF’s work has also been helped by the results achieved by Spain’s national teams in recent years. The titles won by the youth sides, Olympic gold and, naturally, the success of the senior team have made Spain increasingly attractive to players with dual nationality or family ties to the country. The RFEF has built something that goes well beyond a database. It has created a global talent network, connecting scouts, clubs, agents and families. A player can be playing in Liverpool, Zürich, Milan or any other European academy and still end up on Spain’s radar.