There is a revolution happening in youth scouting and it is changing football. “Today, on the platform, there are 250,000 players,” Benjamin Balkin tells Sky Sports . “Last year, there was 130,000.
Next year, there will be half a million.” Balkin is the co-founder of Eyeball, a platform you might not have heard of but one that has most likely become central to how the club you support recruits young players. It is already being used by the majority of them in Europe's top five major leagues.
The sell is simple. The platform provides video clips with thousands of data points for each player. But this is not the Premier League.
These are youngsters playing in amateur football in France, in academies in Africa and, very soon, all across South America. This is how football's next superstar will be unearthed. And they could be anywhere.
Was there once a genius from Mali never discovered? "One hundred per cent, there was," says Oliver Dürr Dehnhardt, Balkin's colleague. "In fact, there were probably 10." He adds: "I am not claiming Eyeball has the solution to find all 10.
They still need to play for a club we cover. But the route to finding all 10 is clearer now. Everybody knows the potential of Africa but nobody knew how to unlock it.
Now you can, it will just spiral." Five years ago, Eyeball was just an idea. Like the best of them, it stemmed from the need to solve a problem.
Balkin, born in France to Danish parents, was a one-time Monaco prospect who found himself tryi.
