Apparently the Vancouver Whitecaps Have a Scouting Team/Department

When Marc Dos Santos came to Vancouver he stated that it was paramount that the club get an effective scouting department in place. Of course, fans went ‘duh!’. While this was expected to happen quickly, the Vancouver Whitecaps entered the season without a scouting department. As the months have dragged on, and the Caps continued to lose, fans and journalists were wondering where those all-important scouts were.

The start of August, and the conclusion of the summer transfer window saw a bunch of minor moves made. While all of these were announced, it seemed that the most important announcement was quietly passed out. If it were not for my reading of an article by Between the Sticks I would have been unaware that the club had, apparently, begun to developing a scouting team.

There are currently three scouts with the team, with a head of scouting just around the corner (or maybe not?). With this hiring there might be the addition of several more scouts. Now, it is worth noting that the Whitecaps have no mention of these scouts on their ‘soccer operations’ webpage, however, Marc Dos Santos did state on his arrival that the scouts would not be advertised as they didn’t want people knowing who their scouts were for some reason… I get it, you don’t want people to know where you are shopping and who you are following, but is it really necessary that it is kept top secret? To me, that leaves it wide-open for the club to say for years into the future “oh, we have scouts, we just won’t tell you who they are…”. Seems fishy to me.

For now though, I will take MDS at his word that he has a scouting team and is moving towards an entire department, as he has been quite candid on everything to this point. Hopefully these mystery scouts and future head of scouting will prove fruitful and the club, and fans, will reap the benefits!