The image of the football scout is a powerful one. The figure in the long coat at the back of the stand who slips away unnoticed before full-time, ready to launch the career of the game’s next superstar.

Life is a little different in 2025. Video scouting means recruitment staff can watch multiple matches daily without leaving their club’s training ground. And we are not talking only about senior fixtures: footage of age-group games at all levels is available at the click of a button.

Supported by sophisticated data models, clubs are armed with unimaginable levels of information before a traditional scout even sets eyes on the target. That has led to some clubs scaling back on their ‘eyes in the stand’ and investing more in video scouting.

Working with Mail Sport, Eyeball has produced an exclusive list of the top talents a large number fans will never have heard of. Because these players are still to make their senior debuts, they will be unknown to many supporters, and even some clubs. But the smartest ones have been aware of them for some time.

That means that when they make their debuts and become known to the wider football community, their impact will be no surprise to those who really understand the market – or those who follow Mail Sport’s work on the best young players around.

The life of a football scout in 2025 is very different now, with recruitment staff able to watch multiple matches daily without leaving their club’s training ground. (Stock image above)

Finding the next Lionel Messi (left) or Cristiano Ronaldo (right) is the dream for football scouts

Eyeball are supplying camera systems to the top clubs in youth football across 30 countries, predominantly in Europe and West Africa, allowing them to film the matches and send the footage back to Eyeball.

These games are then uploaded to the scouting platform along with team sheets, basic player information such as age, height, nationality, position and stronger foot. Eyeball have developed 60 data points with which to assess the players, simplifying the process even further for clubs. It is a treasure trove of information, highlighting countless players who might otherwise have eluded professional clubs.

Having established themselves in Europe and West Africa, Eyeball are now targeting South America, with Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia and Ecuador their markets of interest.

‘Top clubs do not rely on other sources anymore to find good players in West Africa, for example,’ explains Benjamin Balkin, founder and commercial director of Eyeball. ‘They are having their own eyes on it, controlling the process and picking the players up.

‘Look at Pape Diong joining the BlueCo group (Chelsea and Strasbourg) directly from Senegal (in July 2024). In the past he would have gone to Belgium for a few years before they could sign him. Now they are being more proactive about scouting many different regions. This new trend should give more opportunities for more players.’

‘We are trying to lower the barrier of entry,’ adds Oliver Dehnhardt, Eyeball’s head of football strategy and a former international scout for Ajax. ‘If you go to a chief scout of a Premier League club, they will have known for the past seven years about the top few academies in Africa.

‘By the end of 2025, we hope to have access to 200. It’s about trying to track the academies who supply players to the academies that everyone knows about – ASEC Mimosas, Generation Foot and JMG Academy. Scouting is about risk management. The more often you can scout, the more secure you feel.

‘Now top clubs have to jump on players before they leave Africa or South America, rather than waiting for them to go to IFK Gothenburg or Club Bruges. We’ll see many more clubs taking this route many more players per year leaving Africa for Europe, the United States or the Middle East.’

Gassimou Sylla, Noah Fernandez and Ibrahim Kanate (left to right) are among those picked out by Mail Sport and Eyeball in a study of the best young players in the world right now

Chelsea’s Moises Caicedo is one of the stars picked up from Ecuadorian club Independiente del Valle – but Eyeball are confident there are more unearthed gems in that part of the world

Ecuadorian club Independiente del Valle has become a touchstone for European clubs looking for rough diamonds who can be developed and sold at enormous profit.

Chelsea midfielder Moises Caicedo and Paris Saint-Germain defender Willian Pacho are two of the players to have spent time at Independiente, which has earned the club top status in Europe. Dehnhardt argues, however, that impressive talent elsewhere in Ecuador has been overlooked – which Eyeball hope to change.

‘Independiente have a very good track record but even though the level of talent is super high in Ecuador, European clubs won’t look closely at the other clubs as they don’t have the same brand as Independiente,’ he explains.

‘That allows Independiente to take a top young player from a rival for a small fee and then sell them to Europe for much more a year later. What we want is for European clubs to be able to look at the other clubs in Ecuador, such as Barcelona Sporting Club, and manage that risk by watching numerous games.’

Clubs will still make bad signings. Every supporter can remember a player bought by their club for a significant fee, only to see him quietly sold for much less a year later. Yet with the resources available in 2025, there are fewer excuses for sporting directors who keep getting it wrong.

To find out more about how Eyeball have changed youth football scouting, visit