Behind Liverpool’s men’s first team is a network of scouts scouring the globe for future signings.
Their databases are often begun years before a player actually moves to Anfield.
Luis Diaz, for example, was scouted while playing in his homeland of Colombia for Atletico Junior and didn’t join Liverpool from Portuguese giants Porto until more than three years later. Darwin Nunez was first scouted in 2015 playing for Penarol Under-19s in his native Uruguay. And the club’s most recent signing Cody Gakpo was watched even earlier, in 2014, when he was coming through PSV Eindhoven’s academy.
Liverpool Women, however, do not boast such resources. Like many other Women’s Super League (WSL) clubs, Liverpool do not have a group of scouts whose sole focus is to watch, analyse and build reports on players.
So how do they do it?
The search begins at Solar Campus, the club’s training base on the Wirral which they share with League Two side Tranmere Rovers. And Jordan Kevan is integral to it.
A performance analyst, Kevan has built an archive of player data and footage that is constantly being updated.
“What we try to do is work six months ahead, so we’re constantly monitoring players around the world,” Liverpool Women manager Matt Beard tells The Athletic. “We pull data on the players and Jordan’s got a library of players with video footage. We monitor players we like and who fit with the fundamentals of how we play.”
“Pulling the data”, as Beard puts it, is an ongoing process.
“Everyone has input into transfers. It’s not just me. It’s not just Jordan,” Beard says. “We’ve got 33 players that we use as a benchmark. We use a youth league, we use the WSL and a Champions League XI.
“What we do with that is we pull all the data of those players and we compare our players to them to make sure that we’re hitting those numbers — and we make it position-specific. So when we are looking at players we will look at the data and ask, ‘Are they better than what our level is?’.”
If they fit the bill, the backroom staff, led by Beard, will hunker down and go into more detail.
They painstakingly pore over more match footage, with Kevan and his assistant Noah Sansbury providing data and videos using analytical platforms such as InStat and Wyscout. Meanwhile, strength and conditioning coach Colm Smith assesses the players from a physical viewpoint.
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It is in these recruitment meetings where the expertise of assistant manager Amber Whiteley, second assistant Paul McHugh and goalkeeping coach Joe Potts come into play. All the staff watch different tournaments and leagues and are encouraged to share their opinions and offer feedback.
For each player, Liverpool are trying to identify a particular skill set informed by their style of play and what they demand in each position.
“I was a full-back when I played and if you look at full-backs I wouldn’t really look at heading, for example,” Beard explains. “We look at interceptions, stopping crosses, one-v-ones, forward passes from an attacking standpoint. We have position-specific steps that we look at and then we will look at more statistics once we are interested in a player.”
Over the winter, Liverpool signed five players — three were midfielders, two of whom had been playing in the National Women’s Soccer League in the United States. Alongside Miri Taylor, who was signed from LA-based NWSL side Angel City, Fuka Nagano, a Japan international, arrived from the same competition’s North Carolina Courage.
“Fuka can build attacks and has a great passing range,” Beard says. “Those are things we haven’t had since I’ve been back (at the club). It has taken three windows to address that.”
Once players have been identified by club staff, a list is passed on to women’s team managing director Russ Fraser. Usually by then, a player’s agent will have been in contact with Liverpool. Those conversations will give both parties an idea of whether a player’s demands — including wages and length of contract — can be met.
Fraser, who joined from fellow WSL side Leicester City in November 2021, handles those negotiations along with the financial side of all deals. It is the board — made up of chief executive officer Billy Hogan, executive director Susan Black and Fenway Sports Group (FSG) president Mike Gordon — who, on behalf of the owners, supply the budget. It is then down to Fraser to work within those parameters.
So much for the club. But what is it like joining Liverpool from a player’s perspective?
Rachel Furness knows what it is like to sign for and to leave them. The 34-year-old spent three years at the club after first moving on loan from Reading in December 2019 before the deal became permanent in 2020. In February this year, the Northern Ireland midfielder departed to Bristol City of the Championship.
“I was on loan at Tottenham from Reading and I heard Liverpool were potentially interested in signing me over the Christmas period,” Furness says. “It did go through an agent and then I got the OK to speak to Vicky Jepson (Liverpool’s manager at the time).”
Furness believes those conversations are fundamental to how transfers work, particularly in the women’s game.
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“It’s not just about Liverpool being a massive club. What are the structures in place?” Furness says. “Where do the club want to go? It was about if that appealed to me, and at the time it did.”
Another moving part, quite literally, is the physical relocation. For women players at an elite level, this can tend to be a lot more onerous than it is for their male counterparts. “It could make some players not want to leave, it’s that stressful,” Furness says. “I know players that haven’t left clubs because of that upheaval.”
Last summer, Liverpool identified Nicky Evrard of Belgian club Gent as one of their top goalkeeping targets, as she was about to feature for Belgium at the European Championship. A deal failed to transpire and instead she stayed in her homeland by signing for OH Leuven, then went on to be one of the breakout players of the tournament. In March, it was announced Evrard is set to move to the WSL in July, joining London’s serial WSL champions Chelsea.
It failed to work out for Liverpool on that occasion but proves their methods to identify players are not only bearing fruit but are in line with one of Europe’s best teams.
