New subscriber? Start here with SCOUTED
Just signed up? Thinking of joining? Here's what to read first.
Dear reader,
This month, we outlined our next steps towards becoming a sustainable, writer-owned and reader-supported online magazine, while delivering the best football writing on the internet. See below.
To get there, we’re pushing hard to attract more subscribers. Whether you’ve signed up during our drive, have found this sometime after or are a long-term supporter, thank you so much. We wouldn’t be here without you.
And if you’re still weighing up a subscription, perhaps this article will persuade you.
Notebook is a year old at the time of writing and we’ve already published hundreds of newsletters. So our publication is getting a little dense. Football media moves so fast; there’s a lot of incentive to just move onto the next thing, and the next, to keep up with the chaos. But we designed Notebook to allow our writers to slow down and produce work that’s truly timeless.
A subscription to Notebook opens up our entire archive of stories, profiles and analysis - it’d be a shame for any of it to be lost to the sands of time. I thought it would be smart to create a guide through its pages, so new subscribers know where to start. And perhaps old subscribers will find a new favourite read they missed the first time around.
This is an introduction to SCOUTED and the chapters we’ve designed to bring you the next generation. These are stories of change, chats with future superstars, and industry-standard scout reports using data you can’t find anywhere else.
Every word and every writer was paid for by your subscription.
Thank you for being here,
Tom
SCOUTED50
When I first pitched the idea for SCOUTED to Llew in 2014, it was with this tagline: ‘the player profiling project’.
Profiling players has been SCOUTED’s bread-and-butter for a decade. From free, 100-player ebooks in 2016 to selling thousands of copies of The Handbook in print, our magazine has long been dedicated to introducing readers to the next generation with careful analysis and sharp prose.
Now entirely online, the annual SCOUTED50 list serves as our window into the future. Handcrafted by our in-house analysis team and voted on by a list of our industry friends and experts, SCOUTED50 is your definitive guide to the next generation this year.
Each entry contains a February update on the player’s progress, plus links to anything and everything we’ve written on them - so it’s a perfect hub for you to explore Notebook.
The Handbooks
As a brief aside, did you know that by subscribing to Notebook at any tier (from just £5 a month) you get access to our entire digital archive of Handbooks?
Between 2917-2021, we profiled hundreds of young talents in our glorious print magazine, The Scouted Football Handbooks. Today they serve as a fascinating time capsule, a portal into the next generation of yesteryear. The first edition contains Harry Kane, Mohamed Salah and Raheem Sterling, for example. Ahead of the curve indeed.
All yours to download and keep with a subscription. Check your welcome email for a link.
The Profiles
SCOUTED50 is a brief overview of our favourite players, but our publication is built on detail.
So, one-by-one over the course of the year, we’re working our way through the list and profiling each name with detail you simply won’t find anywhere else.
We’ve been extremely lucky to sign a partnership with SkillCorner, a leading name in providing performance and tracking data to the world’s biggest clubs. Yes, even the one you’re thinking about. Probably.
Armed with this industry leading data, our analysts have been curating profiles on SCOUTED50 players to a level of quality we’ve never reached - and, dare I say, football writing has rarely seen.
My pick of the bunch is Llew’s magnificent breakdown of Lucas Bergvall, Tottenham Hotspur’s newest maestro. This is an absolute must-read, so start there.
And when you’re done with that, Stephen’s latest on Carlos Baleba is a fascinating portrait of a seriously unique baller.
Stories from the future
I fundamentally believe in the power of storytelling, even in a space as data and metrics-driven as football analysis. In fact, that makes me believe in it even more - narrative is a warm guiding hand through cold hard numbers.
As an editor, I want Notebook to be a beautiful place to read. And actually read, the way we used to - not with TikTok open to skip to the next SEO heading, but with purpose and joy. That’s only possible if the words are good and nicely organised and the stories are meaningful.
We take immense care to ensure our reading experience is worth the price of admission. We’re very lucky that our readers consider the writing good enough to pay for: it allows us to send writers to meet their subjects in-person, even abroad.
Here’s a collection of those stories.
Cutting-edge analysis
Football is narrative. The way we talk about the game is rooted entirely in story, and those stories emerge from the conclusions we draw from our analysis. So, good analysis shapes good stories.
SCOUTED’s analysts, both in-house and freelance, are some of the best on the internet. Using club-standard processes and data, we dive deeper into the game than any other premium publication. Our work is read and used by some of the biggest decision-makers at some of the biggest clubs in the world, and we take great pride to write analysis rooted in truth and intelligent thought.
When SCOUTED speaks, football listens. Read the following to get ahead:
We have opinions, too
Smart, detailed analysis is all well and good, but sometimes you just want an easy, accessible newsletter to drop into your inbox as you warm up for the day.
Enter Editor’s Take, our infrequent series in which our in-house team (Tom, Steve and Llew) share their thoughts on whatever’s dominating football discourse at any given moment.
Sometimes we even say something smart.
Behind-the-scenes
Finally, as a premium subscriber to SCOUTED Notebook, you’ll get unlimited access to my monthly behind-closed-doors blog, The Technical Area.
This is one editor’s way of talking directly to you guys, our readership. I chat about all the trials, tribulations and struggles of building an independent media business in 2024. Hopefully I’ve broken some taboos along the way. It’s kind of a public diary chronicling our adventures in journalism.
We’re building SCOUTED alongside our readers, and The Technical Area is my chance to give back and develop a relationship I hope we can all value - I certainly do. I’ve linked the most recent entry below.
SCOUTED Notebook is so much more than the pieces I’ve linked above. There’s smart writing on breakout stars like Valentin Barco and Victor Boniface, youth tournament coverage that no other outlet is providing, and long-reads out the wazoo.
All that is waiting for you to discover - click around, have an explore, read to your heart’s content.
And, of course, we’ll be dropping fresh newsletters into your inbox every week. As a premium subscriber, you’ll have access to them all.
Thanks so much for your readership. We hope you love your time here.
Tom
I’ve missed Scouted! Thought you shut down so stopped checking but stumbled on the Substack.
This is a good intro but it’ll be good to have a table or quick bullet points to show what a reader gets in free versus paid sub. It’s not very clear.
Thinking of subbing down the line once I read a few pieces.
Thanks!