What is Wyscout?

Wyscout is one of the most powerful tools in world football. Graeme Bailey looks at its impact.

Have you ever played any edition of FIFA on the PlayStation or Football Manager on your PC? Within that you have the ability to access a database of every player in the world, see his stats etc and lodge a bid - totally unrealistic many think...well it is much closer to real life football than you could ever have imagined thanks to one thing - Wyscout. It is used by the Football Association, the Spanish Football Federation, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Arsenal, Bayern Munich and many, many more, which is really the first clue about Wyscout. But what is Wyscout? Well, as the title would suggest, it is to do with scouting, and that is just what it is - a scouting tool which clubs, players, agents, footballing directors or anyone involved in football can pay and have access to. From its origins in 2008 as a football database, which included a website from which express delivered DVDs could be ordered, a couple of upgrades then included webpages with videos embedded in them, which was a sign of things to come. The company then launched set-top boxes, which allowed customers to access a video database. The Wyscout 2 Platform launched in 2010, which was the website version allowing premium access and this was followed by the current Wyscout 3 version, which includes fully-engaged web-based tools, including video analysis. The latest version of Wyscout also includes the ability to network for clubs, players, agents and even the ability to organise transfers and trials. And, if that is not believable, it is a known fact in footballing circles that a Premier League transfer was concluded this summer completely through Wyscout without that player being seen in person by the buying manager and club. So Wyscout is suddenly, almost from nowhere, touching every aspect of the game in every major league in world football. And what better person to expand on the idea than Wyscout founder Matteo Campodonico. "Wyscout could be considered from one side the most used scouting and transfer platform in the world, with more than 450 clubs using it, and from the other Wyscout could also be considered the biggest football network in the world - of course after FIFA," explained Campodonico. "We have put together the biggest community in the world with more than 300,000 people - sporting directors, scouts, agents, players - communicating and using our systems. Wyscout is a football community." As Wyscout is more than a tool, as a community they are priding themselves in helping to bring the football clubs, on a transfer front, together - making life that much easier for everyone involved, from clubs, to players, to agents, everyone who could possibly be actively involved in a transfer. "We have now created our market place for players and have a transfer zone, where player agents and clubs can promote their own players in the world because the world of the transfer market is global now, there is no agent or club in the world that cannot take this opportunity," Campodonico continued. "You can't just sell a player in the Middle East, China, Australia, Mexico, Brazil - but on the other side you can buy everywhere, so we started that. In the world of football before Wyscout there was maybe just a DVD of the agent to show, but in such a big market that is worth billions there had been no enhancement in helping to share information and to save time and money, so how can you operate in such a