FOOTBALL VISIONARY Humphrey Aghoghovbia Jr is changing football’s landscape, writes Rosa Kama.

Scouting and talent identification is an intrinsic yet undervalued part of the football ecosystem. Traditionally, teams have relied on in-person reviews of games whereby scouts travel up and down the country in order to identify emerging talent, often racking up hefty expenses in the process.

Such limitations have regularly resulted in the myriad of talent available at the grassroots level going undetected. As well as that, they also miss out on the individualised feedback and in-depth analysis from professional scouts that is crucial to their learning and development.

In a bid to overcome these shortcomings, Humphrey Aghoghovbia Jr is looking to revolutionise the way clubs recruit through the launch of Player ID, a data and video scouting platform that champions promising young talent within the grassroots game by providing them with comprehensive scout reports and making these players more accessible to national football recruiters.

“I’m a student of the game.” Humphrey says matter-of-factly on a chilly weekday evening over our Zoom call.

It’s an understatement given his decade of experience across the performance, developmental and recruiting phases of football. He founded his football development company, LionHeart Football, whilst working as a scout in the Championship because he believed in creating opportunities for players at all levels.

When I ask him what LionHeart means as an organisation, his response is considered. “It’s a place where we provide the best footballing experience. We cater to individuals through offering different services whether that is coaching or scouting and analysis.”

He continues: “We describe ourselves as a one-stop shop for football practices. In all, there are three divisions to the company – coaching, scouting and talent.”

It is under the scouting division that Player ID has been developed. Through the platform, players are able to create profiles and upload videos of their best skills and practice footage to highlight their capabilities.

They can then have access to bespoke feedback from LionHeart’s vetted team of professional scouts. This is something he says would have been “invaluable” to him during his playing days.

As a young black Briton coming of age in South London, Humphrey learned football from his older brothers where the game became a central part of his identity.

He adds: “My brothers were football-crazy, they grew up on Manchester United and Sir Alex Ferguson in the Nineties era. So, I was exposed to a football household from a very early age.

“Being the youngest of four, I was able to play football with my brothers and be challenged.”

He was subsequently selected for Fulham FC’s Centre of Excellence programme, though he is modest on the topic of his own ability, describing himself as an “okay” player.

As he matured, his obsession with football developed and he took interest in topics such as scouting, player management and coaching culminating in his decision to pursue BA Sports Coaching at the University of Roehampton.  

Research suggests people from African and Caribbean backgrounds are over-represented on the pitch but under-represented across other areas of the game such as coaching, scouting, refereeing and management.

To break into the industry, he contacted professional clubs in London and asked to get involved in their scouting process.

“Two clubs came back to me: Brentford and Charlton. It just so happened that I went to see Brentford first.”

In order to assess Humphrey’s eye for talent, Brentford’s then Head of Academy Recruitment, Shaun O’Connor, tasked him with finding a player for the club – a common rite of passage for aspiring scouts.

Humphrey not only embraced this challenge but succeeded on his first attempt with the club signing the very first player he referred to their Academy.

As the years went on, he continued to hone his skill for unearthing hidden gems. Most notably, he brought in Fabio Carvalho for Fulham who is now on the radar of the likes of Real Madrid and Liverpool as well as spotting Max Kilman from non-league football who is now playing first-team football in the Premier League with Wolves.

Through his experiences, Humphrey began to recognise a need to make scout reports more accessible to all players instead of being the exclusive reserve of the one per cent of players that are identified and signed.

“The aim [is] to provide allyoung players with the experience of having video analysis and individual feedback from our team of professional scouts.

“These are the elements of academy and elite football that grassroots football kids miss out on.

“If I had the chance to watch myself back on video and receive feedback it would have supported me, so it can add value to a lot of kids at grassroots level.

“We then have the opportunity to support professional football clubs because the traditional method of scouting is where scouts will go out and watch teams on a weekend, running up a lot of expenses and sometimes not even see a player that’s appropriate for their club.

“So, we are trying to modernise it by giving scouts the opportunity to watch players remotely through the platform.”

He recognises, however, the importance for scouts to see players in the flesh and says “the platform is there to supplement and support [existing] recruitment processes.”

With more data available to scouts, this can help to mitigate the effects of unconscious cultural and emotional biases which impact the way decisions are made. These biases range from preferences over technical attributes to negative racial stereotyping.

The Player ID platform can ensure every player gets the podium their talent deserves regardless of their background.

“We’ve got a few boys trialling at clubs and they are users of the platform. It shows there are players that can be identified on a platform of this nature.”

Ultimately, this will create greater opportunities for a diversity of players, while giving teams access to undiscovered talent around the country.