Do lower league football clubs have scouts?
Rarely as a department, and it varies more than the stereotype allows. Established top division clubs outside the elite typically employ one to four named recruitment staff. Below that, recruitment is usually folded into a sporting director's job alongside negotiations and logistics, or handled by the head coach or the president. The licensing rules we checked, in Italy and in Denmark's second tier, do not require a scout, and no league publishes recruitment staffing.
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What the published evidence actually shows
- Riga FC, the best resourced club in Latvia, publishes a scouting department of two: a manager and an analyst.
- Molde publishes a sporting director, three scouts and a video analyst.
- FC Copenhagen hired a head of scouting and recruitment from Rangers in 2025, then moved him to acting technical director in March 2026 without naming a replacement.
- Pafos FC's own site lists a sporting director, a chief scout and a first team analyst.
- In Latvia, a specialist outlet reported in August 2025 that at four of that season's top division clubs the sporting director role did not formally exist at all.
So no scouts is too strong, and a department is far too generous. The accurate description is one to four people at an established top division club, and often a single sporting director below that, usually recently appointed, and the roles change hands quickly.
What the rules require
Very little. Italy's national licensing manual for 2026/27 obliges every Serie A, B and C club to file a sporting director, or an officer who can sign for the company, but its list of mandatory staff contains no scout and no analyst. Denmark's 1st Division licence for 2026/27 requires a managing director, coaches, a doctor and a physio, but no sporting director, scout or analyst.
The demand for the job is not the problem
When OB, a Danish top flight club, advertised its chief scout position on a public job board in 2023 rather than relying on its network and agents, it drew about 200 applications from around the world, against the 15 to 20 the club normally expected. There is no shortage of people who want to do this work.
Nobody measures it, anywhere
UEFA's annual finance report, The European Club Finance and Investment Landscape, covers top division clubs only and states that a detailed breakdown of club staff by area is not available. No club we checked, in any country, publishes recruitment spend as a separate item. The financial half of this question cannot be answered from public sources at all.
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Questions people also ask
How many scouts does a Premier League club have?
Few clubs publish it. Brighton, one of the most data advanced, had seven full time scouts when it made three senior scouts redundant in November 2024 (Training Ground Guru).
Do lower league clubs use data platforms?
Many do. Whether their own league is covered at full depth by that platform is a separate question, and vendors rarely publish coverage league by league.
Sources
- Club staff pages and appointment releases
- FIGC, Manuale Licenze Nazionali 2026/2027 (opens in a new tab)
- Divisionsforeningen, Klublicensmanual 1. division 2026/2027 (opens in a new tab)
- Tipsbladet, October 2023
- Baltic Football News, August 2025
- UEFA, The European Club Finance and Investment Landscape 2024 (opens in a new tab)
- Training Ground Guru, November 2024 (opens in a new tab)