With players linked to Liverpool on a daily basis throughout the summer, we follow up our article on the LFC transfer committee with a look at the Reds scouting team.
Much like any other top football club, Liverpool appoint a number of international and regional scouts to watch players domestically and around the world.
Barry Hunter
Hunter arrived with Dave Fallows from Manchester City and is the chief scout at Liverpool. A Northern Irishman who played for Wrexham, Reading and Rushden and Diamonds, he represented his country on 14 occasions.
He began scouting for Blackburn in 2006, joining Norwich in 2008 before moving to Man City where he was the club’s scout for Italy, Switzerland and Russia. Hunter knows Rodgers from their days at Reading together.
Julian Ward
Ward is the club’s regional scouting manager for Portugal and Spain, another who was appointed in autumn 2012 from Man City. He has been scouting LFC target Luis Alberto and seems to be an important figure given Liverpool’s current interest in Iago Apas, Sergi Canos, Alberto and others.
Ward is actually a sports scientist who in the past worked for the Portuguese football federation monitoring their talent pool. His role at City involved helping to set up their talent identification and monitoring system.
He is another with links to Liverpool – having graduated from John Moores university in 2002 – and Northern Ireland where he attended the University of Ulster from 2005 to 2008. He has previously held positions at Prozone and The Football Association.
Steven Aptroot
Aprtoot is an international scout for Holland and Belgium, based in Amsterdam. He joined the club in July 2011 under Damien Comolli.
He believes in the collective committee aspect of scouting and values things such as ‘VoetbalIQ’ and knows Dutch youth football inside out.
Fernando Troiani
Based in Buenos Aires, Troiani is a scout for South America. He has previously worked for AS Monaco, Hannover 96, Bayer Leverkusen and Grasshopper Zurich. Troiani is another who arrived from Man City last autumn.
Click here to read our who’s who of the LFC ‘transfer committee’ and how they work
Mads Jørgensen
Jorgensen, of Championship Manager fame years ago, was appointed as the club’s Scandinavian scout in August 2011.
Mel Johnson
Johnson arrived under Comolli having worked together at Tottenham, where he recommended Gareth Bale and Adel Taarabt to the London side. Johnson was recruited to head the southern England scouting.
Other regional scouts include Neil Richardson (Lincolnshire), Colin Cardines (Stevenage), and Alan Harper (ex Liverpool and Everton player) whose tasks are to identify talented players and keep data on all games and players watched.
More recently Andy Sayer and Kevin Hunt are also reported to be deflecting from City to Liverpool this summer.
It was reported last summer that Liverpool were also looking to add Rob Newman and David Fernandez from Man City. It was later reported that City managed to retain the duo by offering them promotions within their department.
Youth / Academy Recruitment
Dave Moss
Moss is the academy chief scout. “We have an extensive scouting network in place at Liverpool and my job is to coordinate the entire operation. We need to cover all of the UK and Europe to make sure we know where all of the top young players are” he explains.
Ian Barrigan
Barrigan is the head of local recruitment. “”I head up a large network of scouts who all look to bring in youngsters aged 6-14 years from the local area” he explains.
Matt Newbury
Matt is the club’s senior academy scout, having previously worked at Birmingham City as an academy recruitment officer. Another who joined the club in summer 2012.
Lowie Paul
Lowie is senior academy recruitment officer, a UEFA A licence coach and holder of the FA Academy Managers Licence. He is responsible for identifying and recruiting young exceptionally talented players who can be developed into future 1st team players at Liverpool Football Club. Previously employed by Crystal Palace, he joined Liverpool in 2009.
Note: We don’t pretend to have named every LFC scout above, these are the ones we know of, there will be plenty more.
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