There’s a revolution taking place in youth scouting and it’s altering soccer. “Today, on the platform, there are 250,000 players,” Benjamin Balkin tells Sky Sports activities. “Last year, there was 130,000. Next year, there will be half a million.”
Balkin is the co-founder of Eyeball, a platform you may not have heard of however one which has almost certainly develop into central to how the membership you help recruits younger gamers. It’s already being utilized by nearly all of them in Europe’s high 5 main leagues.
The promote is straightforward. The platform offers video clips with 1000’s of knowledge factors for every participant. However this isn’t the Premier League. These are children taking part in in newbie soccer in France, in academies in Africa and, very quickly, all throughout South America.
That is how soccer’s subsequent celebrity will probably be unearthed. And so they could possibly be wherever. Was there as soon as a genius from Mali by no means found? “One hundred per cent, there was,” says Oliver Dürr Dehnhardt, Balkin’s colleague. “In fact, there were probably 10.”
He provides: “I am not claiming Eyeball has the solution to find all 10. They still need to play for a club we cover. But the route to finding all 10 is clearer now. Everybody knows the potential of Africa but nobody knew how to unlock it. Now you can, it will just spiral.”
5 years in the past, Eyeball was simply an thought. Like the perfect of them, it stemmed from the necessity to remedy an issue. Balkin, born in France to Danish mother and father, was a one-time Monaco prospect who discovered himself attempting to establish younger French expertise for golf equipment overseas.
“Everything started from personal experience. We had a network of clubs interested in finding 14- to 16-year-olds in France. That was our niche. But it was a jungle out there. You were heavily relying on agents. Our problem was a lack of video in youth football.”
They knew it made sense to base themselves within the massive cities, Paris and Marseille, nevertheless it was simply an informed guess which matches to look at. A contact would name a few prospect in Brittany. One other in Lyon. “Everywhere except where it was practical to be.”
He explains: “What we were doing was trying to be lucky basically. Just picking a game a bit instinctively on a Saturday afternoon. Going to watch it and hoping that the left-back you were looking for, for that English club that was in need, was going to be on the pitch.
“What number of occasions have you ever heard that it was the luck of being in the proper place on the proper time? ‘I used to be simply out watching a sport and there he was proper in entrance of me.’ However, in 2025, no soccer membership of their proper thoughts needs to construct a method primarily based round luck.”
That was the situation. They were sticking a pin in a map, trying to find players in France. And even when they did, their reports were missing something. Clubs wanted to see clips not mere written reports. “We determined to start out filming the video games ourselves.”
This was amateur football. “Nothing was on TV, no rights, nothing. We simply purchased cameras, clipped up the gamers we preferred.” But it worked. “The response charge from golf equipment elevated. The choice-making time received method shorter.” Eyeball was the answer.
The challenge for Balkin and co-founder Emil Kjeldsen back in 2020 was to scale it. “The issue was that almost all golf equipment didn’t have a digicam. And in the event that they did, they had been simply utilizing it for inside teaching functions and evaluation. We tried to take away that barrier,” he says.
“By offering golf equipment with a digicam system freed from cost and the evaluation that comes with it, in trade we had been capable of get the workforce sheets and the data that we required on their gamers as a way to construct an precise searchable database ultimately.”
Eyeball’s search perform permits scouts to search out detailed participant profiles on the click on of a button
Dehnhardt got here on the scenario from the opposite angle having labored at Ajax for 3 years as their worldwide scout, answerable for Scandinavia and France but in addition exploring potential markets in Africa and past. “My focus was on emerging talent.”
Ajax have lengthy been considered the most effective golf equipment in Europe with regards to figuring out that expertise. “A very well-funded scouting system, very good scouts,” agrees Dehnhardt. “But they were working on the same basis like any other club,” he provides.
“If an agent they trust called on Thursday to say there was a good player in Prague, they would fly there on the weekend to watch him and then say ‘no’. If there were 10 agents calling then they would pick one and then go see the others on the next nine weekends.
“With Eyeball, you watch 20 minutes and determine whether or not to place them on the record. If the dwell validates the video, I might ship the title to Amsterdam the place 10 video scouts are working. Inside two days, I might have 10 unbiased experiences. You can also make a choice.
“At Ajax, we made Eyeball central to our strategy. I saw for myself the potential, how it can completely change things.
“Ten days as a substitute of 10 weeks or longer? Time is cash on this area. Only a few golf equipment on this planet have the posh of time not being an element. Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain can transfer on the final second and simply pay. Everybody else must be earlier.
“Look at Mathys Tel, he has barely turned 19 and is already on the second big transfer of his life. If Mathys Tel had been born two years later, then there would have been 45 games of him before his debut for Rennes. The decision would be made even earlier.”
Having recognised the chance, Dehnhardt is now working for Eyeball, primarily based of their Copenhagen workplace. “It is really the first big shift in youth scouting in the past 30 years, to be honest,” he insists. “That is why I am here now. It is a game changer.”
Mathys Tel has had multiple massive transfer however in future he could be discovered even earlier
In fact, soccer itself is altering too. Globalisation coupled with elevated monetary restrictions actively encourages golf equipment to forged the web wider – and youthful. “Emerging talent used to be defined as U23 but now it is U19,” explains Dehnhardt.
“More and more clubs do not really care where a player comes from as long as they are good enough. That is already the strategy of clubs at first-team level but with the barrier to international scouting now lowering, clubs will have to transition more and more.”
Balkin agrees. “If everything shifts younger, how does the scouting strategy adapt to that? Data has been focused on first-team football for the past decade but players are moving at 19 now. Maybe it will be 17 soon. The clubs need to know about them at 14.”
Eyeball is the means by which they’ll do this.
Balkin talks by way of it and it’s stunningly easy, Soccer Supervisor for actual. “I can select my data points to make my shortlist. Let’s search for a centre-back, this year, European passport, national team player, this tall. It really makes the scout’s life much easier.”
Inside clicks, a youngster from west Africa might be discovered and a scout in northern Europe is watching clips from a sport being performed on one other continent the place there have been no followers current. “You are not just going to go to Senegal, are you? It kills the geography.”
Eyeball scouting’s sport web page exhibiting a match captured on one in all their cameras
However it’s not simply the large golf equipment that profit. The logistics in Africa have been easy as a result of golf equipment there have embraced it. “Those academies, their entire business model is to sell players. They treat it with so much care. They are fantastic to work with.”
In England, a lot of the golf equipment within the Championship are actually on board, tailoring their use of it for each value and practicality. “You do not need to buy everything, just subscribe to the countries relevant to your scouting department, your strategy,” says Balkin.
Beneath that, Bolton Wanderers are in an attention-grabbing place within the meals chain. They movie their video games from the age of 13 up, proving video and workforce sheets. It helps showcase expertise to promote but in addition offers launched gamers with an opportunity of being picked up elsewhere.
“You do not have to trust some agent you have never heard about who wrote to you on LinkedIn with a good video,” says Dehnhardt. “You can do your own due diligence. At the same time, on Eyeball, you have the direct contact to the club. No intermediaries.”
Having mentioned that, the large companies are on Eyeball. “It makes sense,” says Balkin. “They are a part of the ecosystem with analysts of their own. They make data-driven decisions on players they want to represent, not just on a recommendation from someone else.”
Eyeball’s platform permits scouts to look at video games and gamers from world wide
“There are definitely transfers being made purely on Eyeball,” claims Dehnhardt. Even strikes that, on the face of it, look like examples of conventional scouting, are in actual fact fuelled – earlier than and after – by in depth analysis that’s achieved on the Eyeball platform.
“As a general rule, if the club is using Eyeball and the player is on Eyeball, Eyeball played a role in the due diligence. It is likely that 70 to 80 per cent of the scouting reports made on young players are actually made on video based on Eyeball. It is as simple as that.”
Valy Konate, the Ivory Coast participant from Racing Membership Abidjan who lately shone on the Toulon Event and subsequently earned an enormous transfer to Monaco, nonetheless required some background checks. “The follow-up was on Eyeball, I have no doubt about that.”
Valy Konate joined Monaco from Racing Membership Abidjan and Eyeball performed its half
Put merely, it’s now integral to the scouting course of. “We have passed the tipping point now,” says Balkin. “If you are not using Eyeball, you are the exception. I think there are four in the Premier League not using it. Two in Ligue 1.” And it is just going to develop.
“We have 130 partner academies in Africa and we will reach 200 to 250 by the end of the calendar year.” However the massive challenge, one which Balkin, bashfully fairly than boastfully, admits Eyeball have already invested 9 figures in, is to increase into South America.
“No one wants just a Brazilian strategy. They want a South American strategy. So we are putting a lot of money into mapping Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Uruguay and Ecuador. We have three full-time people on the ground there and we are going all in. Asia is next.”
Eyeball is getting greater. Because of this, the world is getting smaller.
