Ged Searson: Improving the art of football scouting in Australia

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Images supplied by Ged Searson

The Association of Football Coaches and Scouts (AFCAS) have recently undergone its first recruitment and player scouting workshop, focusing on creating scouting reports while also learning footballing scouting skills and techniques to assess players.

These online workshops are taught by AFCAS Managing Director Ged Searson, who has 15 years of experience to his name as a football scout and almost 30 years of experience as a football coach.

Throughout his footballing journey, Searson got an incredible opportunity to work alongside legendary manager Sir Bobby Robson, while also working in the English Premier League with West Ham United and most recently with the Malawi national team during the 2022 African Cup of Nations (AFCON).

In an interview with Soccerscene, Searson reflects on his experiences as a football scout, what it was like to learn from Sir Bobby Robson, the creation of AFCAS and how he is trying to improve football scouting not only in Europe, but in Australia as well.

How did you start working as a football coach and scout?

Ged Searson: I started coaching when I was 19 due to injury, I wanted to learn and study and hopefully make a career working in football. 

I went to monthly coaching seminars across the UK and Europe and I met up with different coaches at different levels. I just went in with an open book and thought I’m going to learn.

At the same time, I had my own academy in Essex across the road from West Ham’s training ground, working with six-year-olds up to the age of 16. I did that for 13 years, built the program and I had about 350 players a week coming to training at one point.

Later on, I started to work in non-league and semi-professional football. Any club that didn’t have money and was struggling in the relegation zones would ring me up and I would try to get them out of trouble, which was a learning experience.

I didn’t want to continue down the academy coaching route anymore because it wasn’t financially viable for me at the time and then I ended up becoming an opposition scout.

However, I will say to become a scout you must learn and then develop the rest of your career. You must go the extra mile, get off your back and try to learn.

My first opposition report was about Brentford, back when they were in League Two. My friend was working for Barnet and he was doing video analysis and he said can we see your report?

I said I’ll send it over but I’m sure your scouts can do it far better than me and he replied we haven’t got any scouts.

Ian Hendon was the manager at the time at Barnet and just started his coaching career. He said he liked the report and asked me if I could do this every week and that was how I started my career as a football scout.

What were some of the highlights throughout your football career?

Ged Searson: Ian Hendon got his big break where he was asked to become the assistant manager at West Ham United to work under his old manager, Sam Allardyce, and recommended me to the club.

The funny thing was that West Ham was my team as a kid and it was a pure coincidence that I got to work for my own club. I worked as an opposition scout and also did recruitment scouting.

In my first year we got promoted from the Championship, winning the playoffs at Wembley. When you think about it, I won a trophy with the team I support, how good is that?

I spent the next two years in the Premier League which was great and I absolutely loved it.

I left West Ham after three years and was offered to become the chief scout of Grimsby Town. I did the opposition scout reports and the recruitment which I’d learned through my time in the Premier League.

We broke the points tally with the most points in the club’s history within one season and had the best away record of any team in the country. We got to the playoffs finals but lost when it went to penalties, which was hard to take.

In regards to my international career, I got a phone call from the technical director of Malawi at the time, Mario Marinica, who I’ve worked with in the past. He asked if I could come over and do your opposition scouting and create a recruitment and scouting team for us.

Heading into AFCON in Cameroon, we were complete and total outsiders. But because we had put together this recruitment team of the guys I’ve worked with and an analysis team with the scouts that I taught, we had a secret weapon.

We were more organised than any other team going into the tournament and we made history. We beat Zimbabwe and we drew with Senegal, who actually won the tournament that year.

We went through to the last 16 and faced Morocco who beat us 2-1, but it was overall a really good experience.

Ged Searson at Leyton Orient F.C. team photo. (Images supplied by Ged Searson).

What was it like learning from Sir Bobby Robson?

Ged Searson: I was very fortunate to be able to go to PSV Eindhoven when Sir Bobby Robson was coach.

I just contacted him and said, can I come and study with you and learn from you? 

He said absolutely, you’re more than welcome to come over and that was it.

I was 24 at the time and was a young coach. He just took me under his wing.

I was on the training ground with him every day and he had me on the pitch next to him when he was doing his sessions. The supporters thought I was his son or something and they couldn’t work out who this young lad was next to him. 

He looked after me and had quite a few visits there and really got to understand more about the game.

He was very old fashioned, a true gentleman and a football enthusiast. 

There’s lots of lovely tales about him being a nice guy and giving his time to people. I hear those stories and I know they’re true because he did exactly the same as me.

How was AFCAS created and what made you lean into teaching football coaching and scouting to others?

Ged Searson: The English FA started to bring out their Talent ID courses and I saw it advertised and thought I better go and do it. They were doing a scouting course and I was interested.

However, I spent three days on a scouting course that had no scouting on it. It was mainly regulations and safeguarding but there wasn’t any technical scouting in any form. Of course, I learnt some things, but it wasn’t a scouting course.

There was a small section on opposition scouting, but the guy teaching hadn’t really done any opposition scouting and I think I’d done about 650 games as an opposition scout.

Then there was something setting in motion and in the back of my mind I was thinking, I could write something here that could be helpful for scouts.

It was maybe two or three years later I decided to put something together that was technical and could teach the skills that scouts do need.

I thought I’m going to teach this from a chief scout’s view and we started off at Emirates Stadium in London, where I taught my first class.

I had 15-16 people there; whether that would be coaches, agents, scouts or anyone who’s just interested in football.

I started teaching tactical scouting, then was asked to teach recruitment scouting and that’s where it took off.

Ged Searson and the coaches winning an award. (Images Supplied by Ged Searson).

What made you decide to provide these online workshops for people in Australia?

Ged Searson: I did a few morning sessions during lockdown and there seemed to be an awful lot of coaches that were quite interested in the Melbourne area.

The guys seemed desperate to do something and they thought coming to do a workshop seemed to be appropriate.

I met a really good group of guys and they did about three levels with me as well.

For whatever reason, I drifted away and I didn’t do the UK morning workshops. Then recently, I had a few people asking if I would do those workshops again and it was actually agents from Australia.

I said I was happy to do that and so I started lining up the morning sessions again.

From conversations I’ve had with agents, there seems to be players at the moment that are slipping through the net and are being missed out.

They said there’s a need for scouting here to help players get identified and move them into clubs and progress from there.

That’s why I’m trying to help scouting develop in Australia and maybe clubs could use scouts more to try and make sure players don’t slip through the net and help those guys get an opportunity with clubs.

What will we see next from AFCAS moving forward and will we see you make an appearance in Australia?

Ged Searson: The next stage for AFCAS is to now get these courses across the world. 

We’ve created an interactive course where you are learning the necessary skills to observe techniques and assess performances as a scout and a coach.

It would be nice to go over to Australia and do a workshop there if there was any interest by a club. It would be a fantastic opportunity.

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Marie-Louise Eta makes history as new Union Berlin head coach

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Image credit: FC Union Berlin

In an historic appointment, Eta will take over as head coach of Union Berlin until the end of the season.

History in the making

Previously the first female assistant coach in Bundesliga history with Union Berlin, Eta will now take the reigns of the men’s first team on an interim basis.

Currently, the club sit in 11th place in the Bundesliga table, but with only two wins so far in 2026, relegation appears an all-too-real prospect, and one which the club is desperate to avoid.

“Given the points gap in the lower half of the table, our place in the Bundesliga is not yet secure,” said Eta via official media release.

‘I am delighted that the club has entrusted me with this challenging task. One of Union’s strengths has always been, and remains, the ability to pull together in such situations.”

Eta will begin as Union’s new head coach with immediate effect, and will be in the dugout for the club’s matchup against Wolfsburg this weekend.

 

A step into an equal future

Eta’s appointment signals a major step towards a more level playing field in the football landscape.

Furthermore, Eta joins other coaches including Sabrinna Wittmann, Hannah Dingley and Corinne Diacre who, in recent years, have blazed a trail for female coaches to step into the men’s game.

Wittmann currently manages FC Ingolstadt in Germany’s third division, and was the first female head coach in Germany’s top three divisions.

In 2023, Dingley became caretaker manager of Forest Green Rovers, and thus the first woman to lead a men’s professional team in England.

Diacre, now head coach of France’s women’s national team, managed Ligue 2’s Clerment Foot between 2014 and 2017.

 

Final thoughts

The impact therefore, is that Eta’s appointment will show future generations of aspiring female coaches that men’s football is an equally viable and possible pathway as the women’s game.

The time is now to level the playing field.

And while it may be a short-term role, its effect on attitudes towards equality and fair opportunities in the game will hopefully resonate long after the season ends.

“20 Years Ahead”: The System Quietly Reshaping Korean Football

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Image Credit: Goal.com / Getty Images

For all its consistency, Korean football has long carried an underlying tension.

On paper, it works. The national teams remain competitive, the player pool is technically sound, and the country continues to produce athletes capable of performing on the continental stage. But beneath that surface-level success, a more uncomfortable question has persisted about whether Korea has been simply maintaining its position while others evolve.

That question has driven the Korea Football Association (KFA) toward one of the most ambitious structural overhauls in modern football development: the Made in Korea (MIK) Project. Rather than focusing on short-term gains or isolated improvements, the initiative attempts to do something far more complex. It is rebuilding the foundations of how football is taught, understood and executed across the entire ecosystem.

Internally, the project has been described as having “brought Korean football 20 years ahead.” Whether that claim ultimately proves accurate remains to be seen, but what is already clear is the scale of the shift taking place.

From talent to system

The starting point was not talent, but structure. For years, concerns had been growing within Korean football circles about a lack of uniqueness in players, inconsistencies in long-term planning and an over-reliance on safe, risk-averse styles of play. The system, while producing disciplined and technically capable footballers, was not consistently producing players equipped to thrive in the most demanding environments. Environments such as Europe, where tempo, decision-making speed and adaptability define success.

Rather than attempting to patch these issues, the KFA chose to reimagine the system itself.

At the core of the MIK Project is the idea that high performance is not the result of individual excellence alone, but of an interconnected structure that allows that excellence to emerge consistently. Coaching, sports science, performance analysis, leadership and education are no longer treated as separate pillars, but as components of a single, integrated system designed to evolve continuously.

A new operating model

This philosophy is most clearly expressed through the project’s adoption of a cell-based operating model. In place of traditional hierarchies, the system is organised into small, cross-functional units, called “cells”. These cells are given autonomy over their work while remaining connected through shared frameworks and objectives. Each unit is responsible not only for delivery, but for learning, adapting and refining its approach on a constant cycle.

The intention is to bring decision-making closer to the pitch, allowing those working directly with players to respond faster and more effectively to the realities of the game. In an environment where marginal gains are often decisive, that speed of adaptation can be critical.

Closing the gap

Yet structure alone is not enough. The project is equally shaped by a clear-eyed assessment of where Korean football currently stands in relation to the world’s elite.

Comparative analysis has highlighted several consistent gaps: technical execution under pressure, the ability to operate at higher game speeds and effectiveness in decisive moments such as one-on-one situations. These are not deficiencies of talent, but of context. Korean players, while highly capable, have often developed within systems that prioritise control and precision over risk and spontaneity.

The consequence is a style that can become predictable under pressure.

Training for reality

To address this, the MIK Project has fundamentally shifted training methodology. Sessions are increasingly designed to replicate the intensity and unpredictability of real matches, placing players in situations where decisions must be made quickly, under pressure, and often in confined spaces. The focus is no longer on rehearsing ideal scenarios, but on preparing players for imperfect ones.

This approach reflects a broader philosophical shift that prioritises adaptability over perfection, and decision-making over repetition.

Evolving the Korean identity

Importantly, this evolution does not come at the expense of Korea’s existing strengths. Discipline, work ethic and technical proficiency remain central to the national identity. What the MIK Project seeks to do is build upon those foundations, combining them with the creativity, speed, and tactical awareness required at the highest level of the game.

It is, in many ways, an attempt to reconcile tradition with modernity.

A global ambition

The ambition underpinning the project is unmistakable. The KFA is not simply aiming to remain competitive within Asia, but to re-establish itself among the world’s leading football nations. That means producing players capable of not only reaching Europe, but succeeding there.

More than a project

What makes the MIK Project particularly compelling is that it does not present itself as a finished solution. Instead, it is designed as a system that evolves, adjusts and refines itself over time. In a sport where trends shift rapidly and competitive edges are constantly eroded, that capacity for continuous development may prove more valuable than any single innovation.

For other football nations, Korea’s approach offers an instructive case study. While many federations continue to debate philosophical direction, the KFA has committed to structural transformation, embedding its ideas not only in theory, but in practice.

Whether the project ultimately delivers on its boldest ambitions will depend on time, execution, and the unpredictable nature of the game itself. But one thing is already evident.

Korean football is no longer standing still.

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