It’s the time of the season for scouting. Many MLS coaches base their draft-day decisions largely on the games they see during college playoffs. Players, meanwhile, try to avoid glancing at who is in the stands.
The clocks are set back, the leaves drop from trees and the Halloween candy disappears, but one of the surest signs of November’s arrival is the sighting of MLS coaches at college soccer stadiums.
Even counting their assistants and bosses, these birds are scarce, numbering fewer than 50 nationwide. Yet each November, they begin showing up on metal bleachers everywhere.
And while college players will claim to be too engaged in their teams to notice, many know that as postseason rolls around, they are performing under the eyes of these – forgive the metaphor – hawks.
“We pretty much know that once these guys are done with the MLS season, there’s going to be a lot more activity at our games,” said Stanford defender Lee Morrison. “I’ve never tried to look for anybody, but sometimes I know they’re there, because people tell me.”
It must be hard to avoid the grapevine, when fans are pointing and whispering, “That’s Sigi Schmid,” or “The Chicago Fire is here,” during warm-ups.
November isn’t the only time that scouting occurs, but MLS coaches rarely have the time or the budget to see many college games earlier in the year. When the college season kicks off in late August, MLS is hitting its stretch run. The college programs located in MLS cities get a few visitors from the pros during the season, but the others go largely unseen until the playoffs.
In the meantime, scouting takes a different form.
“First, scouting is about using your contacts,” Kansas City Coach Bob Gansler said. “You talk to college coaches all the time during the fall. I say, ‘Tell me about your best and tell me about the best you’ve seen.’ You go to the people you trust and Tim Mulqueen, Brian Bliss and myself each have our own in different parts of the country. You do your homework, then you go to the conference tournaments.”
PRESSURE COOKER. The majority of college teams see their seasons end in their conference tournaments. Of the rest, all but four see their seasons end in the NCAA tournament before reaching the College Cup. The magnified importance of November games is enough to test the nerves, but the added pressure of impressing key observers can have varying effects.
“I actually kind of like it,” Morrison said of feeling watched. He has drawn attention since his freshman year when Stanford advanced to the national final. “I like being in the spotlight; I feel like I play better in big games with big crowds. … Some guys can get nervous, knowing somebody’s watching them, and actually try to do too much. That’s when you play the worst.”
College coaches have different methods of addressing attention from the next level with their players. Some, like SMU’s Schellas Hyndman, who has four Player of the Year candidates on his roster this season, believe in informing their players when scouts are present.
“I want them to know that they’re going to be watched tonight,” Hyndman said. “This might be a good opportunity to catch somebody’s attention. So have good game … I don’t sell their play as being more important than the team’s win, [but] I think as a player I would want someone to tell me beforehand, rather than come to me after the game and say, ‘A couple people came to watch you today and you did OK,’ because I know I’d do better than OK if I knew people were there.”
Clemson coach Trevor Adair, whose team seldom sees scouts until the postseason because of its geographic location, agrees.
“I’ve never had the presence of a scout affect a player’s performance, at least not that he has admitted to me,” Adair said. “Besides, the ones that handle that pressure better will probably make better pros.”
Goalkeepers are better off not knowing about scouts, according to SMU’s Byron Foss, since there are few proactive things they can do to elevate their games.
“It’s all about consistency and making things easy on yourself,” said Foss, who had 10 regular-season shutouts. “You have to let the game come to you … It’s an advantage for me that our team is so good, because eventually, people will see me play.”
Seniors can face a ticking clock as they approach their last few chances to make an impression. SMU senior Carl Bussey has found showcasing his talent to be difficult in his final season. Foremost, he had to overcome a torn knee ligament and missed the first six games of the season. Despite a remarkably fast recovery, he has been shifted from one position to another throughout the season and is still playing at “about 85 percent.”
“I think of being versatile as an advantage and a disadvantage,” Bussey said. “On one hand, a [pro] team can use me anywhere they want, but on the other hand I haven’t gotten in a comfortable realm this season because I’m moving from place to place.”
WHAT TO LOOK FOR. The pool of college players is vastly larger than the number of roster spots available in MLS, so picking out potential pros requires much more than reading the All-America lists.
“Just because you’re a good college player, doesn’t mean you’re going to be a good professional player,” Los Angeles coach Sigi Schmid said. In his canvassing of college coaches, Schmid makes sure to ask about character, work ethic and soccer background.
“The thing that matters most, and the thing that is hardest to find sometimes, is that thing [Seton Hall coach] Manny Schellscheidt calls ‘a soccer brain.’ I’m looking for someone who can feel the game a little better everyone else. A guy might play just one minute with the ball in a 90-minute game. He’s got to play the other 89 minutes, too.”
Schmid does not believe, however, that there are good pro prospects who are unable to shine at the college level because the style does not suit them.
“I think if you’re a good player, you’ll find a way to impact a college game,” he said.
Hyndman, knowing that scouts come to see things the box score cannot tell them, includes that in his pregame advice.
“It might be the little things that catch their eyes,” Hyndman said. “Not whether you score two goals, but how do you recover when you lose the ball or how are you in transition. These coaches are looking for something special and they’ve got a lot of people to look at.”
Some scouts want to know if players are athletically superior to their teammates. Others want to know if a player is willing to join MLS right after the draft, rather than wait until after a May graduation. Others even ask college coaches to use a player at a different position than he normally plays.
HIERARCHY OF NEEDS. Scouting is an imperfect science, one that often comes down to hunches and heresy, but MLS coaches admit they could do a better job. Until the league expands, however, there will continue to be a surplus of equally viable prospects.
“I don’t think there are too many secrets out there,” Gansler said. “It could be a foreign kid at a school outside Division I but chances are, people know about him. American kids, more often than not, are pretty much known quantities.”
One college coach said he still receives questionnaires – which he discards – about his players’ basic abilities. Another said one of his players got a call from an MLS scout on the eve of his conference championship. But Adair said he has found very little to criticize about the way MLS hunts for future stars.
“I just respect how MLS coaches have handled it, being open, honest and professional,” Adair said. “I don’t think they see enough games, but in the hierarchy of what they need, there are not that many slots available to college players in MLS and the teams are probably spending more time on finding that foreign player that can fit in and make a difference.”
Schmid said the scouting process is improving, but that coaches are unlikely to relinquish the responsibilities to a scouting staff because they want to see players for themselves. In recent years, more MLS teams are holding their own combines for prospects in addition to the college all-star games prior to the draft in Florida. Kansas City is not one of them.
“I’ve always been of the persuasion that I like to see the creature in his natural habitat, so to speak, not in a trial situation or an all-star situation,” Gansler said. “During the [MLS] season, it’s really tough to go to more than the odd game … the ideal situation, to watch one player seven or eight times, hardly every happens.”
Like many players, Bussey couldn’t care less how scouts go about their jobs. Paying attention to who is in the stands won’t change the way he plays.
“I wouldn’t know one if he came up and bit me in the cheek,” Bussey said. “I just hope I get drafted.”
by Soccer America Associate Editor Will Kuhns