Hey Reader,

Most aspiring scouts write four pages of description and two lines of verdict.

It’s the wrong way round.

Ross Ireland (Recruitment Analyst at Rangers FC) was strong about this in our Recruitment Room mentor session last week. The verdict is the most important part of the report. Not the four-corner breakdown. Not the data visuals. The verdict.

Everything else exists to justify it.

What a verdict actually says

Ross’ framing is simple. The verdict has to answer two questions:

What’s the recommendation?

What’s the next action in the process?

Sign. Monitor. Disregard. Re-watch in 12 months. Be specific. Vague verdicts don’t get acted on.

His exact words: “There’s nothing more exciting than when somebody is so strong in a player, and they’re really excited about the player, and they really push the player.”

That conviction is what decision-makers are scanning for. A Sporting Director picking up your report isn’t reading top to bottom. They’re scanning for the conclusion. The rest is the audit trail.

Fit comes first

Even an unbelievable technical profile means nothing if the player doesn’t fit the system.

This came up in the session through Eamon, who is a Recruitment Room member, who scouts for Greenock Morton. Morton play three at the back. That single tactical detail changes every verdict he writes. A profile that suits a four-system doesn’t suit Morton, no matter how strong the numbers are.

Squad needs, formation, budget, contract length - these aren’t background information for your verdict. They’re part of it.

Adjusting your eye to the level

This is the trap I fell into when I first started full-time in football.

My first four or five recommendations were all outside the club’s actual price range. Not by a bit. By a lot. I was watching with a Premier League and Bundesliga eye and writing verdicts for a Scottish Premiership budget reality.

The players I was recommending were good. They just weren’t recommendations the club could ever act on.

Ross had the parallel from the other direction. He’d been watching lower-level football all day, then put a Champions League game on at home and genuinely thought he was watching FIFA. The decision-making, the speed, the crispness. Completely different game.

The lesson is the same either way. Watch a lot of football at the level you’re scouting for before you start recommending.

Writing a verdict when you don’t have a club

This is the question that lands hardest for most members. Yago asked it during the session.

How do you write a verdict when you’re scouting for your portfolio, not a club?

The answer is to stay consistent on the level you’re benchmarking at. Always Brazilian Série B. Always MLS Next Pro. Always Scottish Premiership. Whatever you choose, stick with it. Don’t jump from Serbian second division to Premier League across different reports - the recommendations stop making sense.

And state the level explicitly in the verdict itself.

“Recommendation for Band 2 European leagues.” “Recommendation for North American top-division clubs.”

That single move makes your portfolio look like work a club can act on. Not someone writing observations in the abstract.

The real difference

The four-corner breakdown is the supporting work. The data visuals are the supporting work. The match grades are the supporting work.

The verdict is the report.

That’s what separates a scout from someone writing observations. The willingness to be specific, to state the level, to push the player you believe in - and to do it where the reader will actually read it.

Liam