Should You Be ‘Untested Player in Nigeria’ | Learn How to Sell Yourself to a Professional Club Abroad

 For the last seven years as Sport marketing consultant, I have engaged several ‘untested players in Nigeria to help them find a career path in the football market. Some that have worked with us have started to reap the result now.

Untested or uncapped footballers are players that haven’t signed for any professional club or even played for any age group national team. Such players don’t have any verifiable record and most likely do not have video clips to present to clubs for assessment. If you’re in the trade of marketing players  you’ll know that this category of untested players are very difficult to sell to clubs abroad.

Most professional football clubs hardly conduct open trials and do not waste their time with untested players. What a club does is this; they send out their scouts to  track players and do performance analysis on each player introduced to them before the player is issued an invite for trials.

Management and the coaching crew can sit together to watch a player’s video clips and if they are convinced, they can then invite the player for trials.

A player that is untested and doesn’t have video clips are regarded as a player without CV or a career profile. So marketers like us have a hard time trying to convince scouts or clubs to offer such player an invitation letter for trials, since we have nothing to present for the player’s assessment. Imagine if a  salesman tries to convince you to import a car you haven’t seen or tested on the road to assess it’s performance. It’s a hard sell!

I agree, sometimes our expertise and goodwill help us convince clubs with our word of mouth. They may decide to invite the player, but the player must pay himself to the trials. Clubs are run like business, so a club won’t want to make an investment for an unverifiable player – they won’t do that.

There are 3 ways a untested player can sell himself or herself to a professional football club abroad:

Video Clips: Arrange for  own video clips. Get a professional who matches, then comply your best performance into a one DVD of about 45 minutes or so.

Note, video clips aren’t match videos. It is a compilation of your best performances in a one DVD.

Post your Video clips on YouTube and send the links to sport marketers, Scouts, Agents or clubs of your interest. However, the probability of your video clips getting you a trial is so slim. But it has worked for few players in the past.

Trial Camp: Register for a quality trial camp such as football CV in UK. You many decide on how many days and trial matches you would want to participate and a custom price will be send to you to pay. Such trial camps invite top scouts and Agents to come and assess players while they play some quality matches. If a scout get interested in you, he can then invite you for a proper trials in a club.

 Most trial camps help participants compile their best performances in a video clip. So if they didn’t catch the interest of any scout, they could send their video clips to other clubs.

Trial camps have been one of the best way a untested player can sell himself and get attention of professional club abroad.

Tournaments: Look for a youth club or Academy that plan to go for a tournament abroad this year. If you are good, the club will definitely include you as part of the squad that will be traveling abroad.

Most likely you will be required to pay fees that covers your registration and travel expenses. Unless, off-course, the youth team is sponsored by an individual or a corporate organization.

A lot of scouts parade tournament like MIC tournament, Arsenal festivals, Villarreal cup tournaments and if you are good, you are most likely to catch a scouts interest.

GreenHunters Sports International can help an individual player or a youth club attend a trial camp or tournament this years. Check out the list of trial camps and tournament scheduled to hold this year. Contact us: +234 809 877 2556 or email us: gh.sports1@gmail.com