It was the biggest game of Andre Odeku’s career. A week earlier, the 18-year-old attacker played in the seventh tier of the English football pyramid. Now he lined up for Burnley’s Under-23 side in a trial match, with a view to signing for the club’s then Premier League academy.
“Their scouts invited me for a week-long training,” explains Odeku. “I had never been on fields like that before: the grass was so nice and flat; the ball moved so smoothly and intensely; there were Premier League players training right next to us. They liked what they saw, so they wanted to see me up close in a match.”
In football terms, Odeku had been plucked from relative obscurity: he’d been discovered entering Erling Haaland-esque numbers for the development team at semi-professional North London’s Haringey Borough; he would go on to score 25 goals in 18 games from the wing and win the league’s golden boot in the 2021–22 season.
But Odeku hadn’t been spotted in the traditional way. Weeks before, in the mud of his local park in East London, he’d docked his phone, hit Record and started doing as many push-ups as he could in 30 seconds. As parents and dog walkers strolled by, he sprinted 10 yards, performed standing jumps and completed a chest-thumping series of explosive lateral rebound hops.
Everything was watched by AiSCOUT, a platform that allows football players to go through virtual trials. Players perform athletic and technical drills on the app, then are graded through an AI scoring system built by data specialists and leading scouts from the game. It is these talent spotters who decide which pair of prodigies will fulfill their childhood dream of becoming a professional footballer and which will end up having no football career at all.
AiSCOUT founder Darren Peries began developing the app after his son was released from Spurs at the age of 16. platform’s COO and director of sports science. “While there is a lot of data being collected in the senior professional game, there is not the same infrastructure in youth football, even at the elite level.”
After seven months of live testing and the analysis of millions of data points, AiSCOUT machine learning is now able to measure players’ biomechanics, technique and athletic prowess in minute detail; feedback is automated and delivered through the app within an hour. After players complete core athletic drills, the best are invited to show off their on-the-ball skills: Odeku’s virtual Burnley trial included an agility dribble and seven-cone pattern in the park; his blistering speed and ball control earned the teenager an invitation to the club’s Barnfield training center in Lancashire.
In a game that is often ruthless in discarding young footballers, AiSCOUT offers a second chance, both for players and scouts. Odeku was released from Arsenal aged 11 and then Brentford aged 13; its diminutive size was cited as a factor. “Academies have a ‘win now’ mentality, so smaller players who have yet to mature often get fired,” says Felton-Thomas. “Once that happens, no eyes are on them, even though they’ve had a growth spurt. Now players can get back into the system via AiSCOUT, where clubs can track their progress.”
