Rob Mackenzie: How Tottenham went to stage two of transfer strategy

Inside Tottenham’s scouting department

Mackenzie was previously Head of Recruitment at Aston Villa and at Leuven in Belgium, as well as playing a major role in Leicester City’s Premier League title triumph as Head of Technical Scouting.

On the TGG Pod, he gave a fascinating insight into how Tottenham’s scouting department operates, starting off by explaining how his own role works. 

“My responsibility is to manage a team of 10 people, plus myself, within first-team scouting,” he said. “We’re responsible for the identification and assessment and recommendation collectively of players from U19 international age groups up to first team.

“In addition to managing those individuals and instilling the processes, my role is to support the Technical Director, Johan Lange (now joint Sporting Director), and the Head Coach Thomas Frank and his staff when we start initiating discussions around what’s required within our own squad, here and now but also in the future.

“And then, in the case of those meetings and discussions, bringing to life the stories and cases of players that we as a department position to be the most appealing.”

In terms of his staff, Mackenzie has five ‘hands-on’ scouts.

“We have three people based abroad, within their respective countries – Joao Ferreira (Portugal), Giuseppe Di Credico (Italy) and Max Legath (Germany),” he explained. “They’re responsible for their own competition predominantly, whilst also scouting other competitions that we distribute between the group.

“Being able to travel anywhere to watch football is arguably, from a logistical perspective, as easy as it’s ever been, so we actually prioritise the individual over the location. 

“Giuseppe and Max came through a process that we ran about 15 months ago – yourselves at Training Ground Guru helped bring interest and exposure to the advert that we ran then – and the priority is not necessarily on where they’re based.

“And we have Seb Taghizadek, who fulfils a similar role, and Alex Fraser, our Chief Scout, who are both based in the UK. We have those five doing predominantly hands-on-scouting, in addition to myself.

“I’m out on the road, scouting players live, because if I’m to be the mouthpiece of the department, I have to have a very strong opinion myself and I have to be convinced about the players that we’re suggesting being the right ones.

“And then we have a team of Recruitment Analysts who are more hybrid in their skillset. They very much assist with the live scouting, video scouting, but they’re also responsible for player profiling and bringing player stories to life internally for us within the department.

“And then we have somebody who can piece it all together in terms of assisting with the travel logistics, meeting logistics – whenever we invite people over it’s so vitally important to ensure that first impressions are as good as they possibly can be – Jamie Bryan, our Scouting Co-ordinator, who does a fantastic role in that for us. 

“He’s based at the training ground. And then we also have Joe Bucknall as our Lead Scouting Insights Analyst and his role is assisting us exclusively within the scouting department with regards to data and objective insight.

“And he does a fantastic job in ensuring that across both identification and assessment, we have as much of a comprehensive understanding of what a player is currently doing, what they’re potentially capable of doing and that’s something that we’re able to understand longitudinally throughout their career. That level of contribution to the departments is really invaluable.”

The scouting process 

So many different factors come into play when scouting players – your own club’s game model, character, physicality, availability and financials to name just a few.

This means that Mackenzie and his team need understanding of areas as varied as psychology, sports science, coaching and financials. 

Character is huge, especially with Frank as the Head Coach at Tottenham.

“Thomas Frank places a very strong emphasis on character and people,” Mackenzie told the TGG Pod. “One of his things, that I know he’s talked about publicly, is being confident but humble, having discipline, and simple things such as being on time, being present. 

“So whenever we’re trying to gauge the potential character personality of any player, you have to acknowledge that we have some real established lines here.”

Gaining intelligence is often not the hard part, but rather being aware of your own biases as a scout. 

“Everybody’s points of reference as human beings are different,” Mackenzie explained. “It’s not that you can’t necessarily find enough people to speak to who have worked with them, who’ve played with them, but what I find as a human being find annoying, frustrating, unacceptable, you might be sat there saying, ‘I don’t have a problem with any of those things.’”

Physicality is another crucial part of the jigsaw, particularly in the all-action Premier League.

“The Premier League has got to that point where almost everybody is an elite athlete first and foremost,” Mackenzie said. “It’s such an important part of the package.  

“Even (Kalidou) Koulibaly, when he left Napoli to join Chelsea, he said in Serie A you can think and then you can run. In the Premier League you have to think while you run.

“If you look across Europe, across the world, there is nothing that compares to this, there just isn’t. The athleticism is remarkable. Unless you play one or two very specific positions and have an unbelievably high skill level and are exceptional technically, without athleticism you won’t make it.”

Tied in with physicality is robustness and availability. 

“A coach will always want players who can play for him every week, even if he chooses to rotate,” Mackenzie said. “A Chief Executive will want to be trying to maximise the potential value generation of an asset. 

“So the ability to have your players on the pitch regularly is a skill and can differentiate you from teams who are not able to do that. So again, it’s part of the profiling and assessment aspect of our process. 

“The perceived risk robustness of a player is something that we value very highly. Just as an example, if you were to consider someone like Muhammed Kudus, if you looked at his time at West Ham, outside of being called up for his national team and getting sent off against us and subsequently suspended, he missed two match days. 

“He was never an unused sub – if available on the bench, he would always come on. This is a geyser who has found a way to keep himself fit and as a result already has been one of our most played players.

“It’s a reflection on physical make-up and genetics, but it’s also a reflection on how professional they are.”

Powers of persuasion are another important part of Mackenzie’s toolkit, as was proven in the case of Bergvall, who chose Tottenham over Barcelona.

The deal for the 18-year-old was agreed a couple of days after the close of the 2023/24 winter transfer window and officially went through the following summer.

“We had done enough and convinced Lucas and his family enough that we were actually where he wanted to come,” Mackenzie remembered. 

“Based on the work that we’d done, the knowledge that we showed him and his parents – about his life to that point, his qualities as a footballer, how he would fit – we found ourselves in a position where an 18-year-old chose us over Barcelona.”

The Swede did go to visit the Spanish giants, leaving Mackenzie with a nervous wait to see what his decision would be.

“I remember me and Johan (Lange) were on Flight Radar looking at whether his flight was actually taking off from Barcelona. You were like, ’Is he on that plane? Is he going back or is he just going to stay and sign?’

“Because, let’s be honest, the normal timeline if you go visit somewhere (like Barcelona) you would be going to stay there and sign. I remember we were that excited and invested in it that we were like, ‘Is he on that plane?’ And then checking the WhatsApp messages and going, ‘They’re on one tick.’

“Because you’re like, ‘If he gets back to Stockholm, we’ve got a real chance here, because you don’t go there if you’re just gonna sign.’ The news then came through that his choice was us.

“With Lucas, here is unbelievable talent. I’m very cautious, when credibility is everything and your opinion is all you have as your badge of honour,  but I think in the case of Lucas Bergvall here is a genuine generational talent. You realise that as soon as you meet him that this is different.”