What is scanning in football?

Factball #24

Jul 24, 2023

Dear all,

Today I want to talk to you about a skill in football that is not yet included in the statistics we see on TV broadcasts, but which is gaining traction in the media.

Alerted by a friend who had just discovered this video about Messi's “neck” capabilities, I decided to address this topic that could have implications on the way youth teams train and for the technological future of football.

So let's talk about “scanning”, an athlete trait that could well be the difference between a good player and a top player. Or is its real impact not that significant?

That's what we'll find out, using the facts as always!

What is it and how to do it?

Far from being an innovation or even a recent technique, scanning is defined by experts as:

Scanning in football denotes an active head movement where a player’s face is temporarily directed away from the ball to gather information in preparation for subsequently engaging with the ball. - Jordet et al, 2020

However, turning the head just to turn is of no value, and you need to know exactly what you are looking for and when to do it.

In terms of the type of information you are trying to obtain with this movement, we can mention the proximity of opponents, the positioning of teammates and the visualization of open spaces through which a move can potentially develop.

Beyond all this, there is the right time to do it. One of the great experts in the field, Geir Jordet, tells us that the perfect moment for a player to look away is between touches on the ball and immediately after a touch on the ball. This means that when another player is in direct contact with the ball, it is wrong to look away because fundamentally we are losing the opportunity to understand where the ball will go next. However, as soon as we collect that information, we should then look away and collect other types of data.

Practical effects

This topic has been heavily analysed lately and as it is something easy to observe and account for through audiovisual resources, the conclusions are quite concrete and reliable.

To begin with, I will introduce you to one of the great works in this area, entitled “Scanning, Contextual Factors, and Association With Performance in English Premier League Footballers: An Investigation Across a Season”. It consists of a study of 27 elite footballers who played in the Premier League in 2020, over 21 games, which resulted in 9574 observations. In this document, there are some very relevant conclusions to retain:

Players made, on average, 3 scans in the 10 seconds before receiving the ball;
Players made significantly more scans when possession was kept after their actions with the ball than when they lost it;
In observations where the player decided to make a pass, it was recorded that successful passes had more scans than failed passes;
The more scans a player makes, the more likely they are to execute a successful pass;
There are considerable differences in the number of scans per second according to the position of the player. Central midfielders and central defenders do the most, and forwards do the least.

In another research, from 2021, this time in the Norwegian first division (Eliteserien), 4 central midfielders aged between 17 and 23 and playing in the first team of their clubs were analysed.

Some of the most relevant findings of the study were the following:

Players made longer scans when the ball was in the air than when it was on the pitch;
Players scanned longer when the ball was passed between two players than when the ball was controlled, between touches, by the player himself;
Players detect more opponents than teammates during scans;
There are strong indications that more than 97% of the scans are so fast that there is no “fixation” of the gaze, i.e. it is not possible to detect details. Athletes can simply “take note” of the direction of movement of the other players and the colour of the shirt.

In the third and last paper I bring you today, it was possible to corroborate many of the results we had already seen and also to obtain some new information. Let's analyse the document “Scanning activity in elite youth football players”, by another great expert in the field, Karl Aksum.

In this 2021 study, the semi-finals and the final of the U-17 and U-19 European Championships were analysed, resulting in 1686 attacking situations by 53 field players who were present in both the semi-finals and the final.

What was already known about central midfielders and central defenders being the most scanned was sustained, as well as the positive relationship between passing success and frequency of scans.

The fresh, albeit expected, finding was that U19 players scanned significantly more than U17 players, indicating that experience and football maturity is a decisive factor in the execution of this skill.

Finally, for those who still do not have their curiosity satisfied, I also leave here a “masterclass” by the author of this last study, present in the FIFA training modules.

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Conclusion

I think there is no doubt that scanning is a critical skill for all modern players.

There are already very evident cases of increases in performance in a specific position thanks to this skill, as we can see with Haaland. The Norwegian, apart from all his physical and technical attributes, also manages to stand out from other forwards by scanning more than the average in that position.

In addition, the fact that there is concrete information on when and how to scan brings a lot of objectivity to a sport that itself has an endless number of variables in constant motion.

However, there is one component here that for me is the most interesting for the future: the use of virtual reality devices could rapidly become mandatory at youth level. There are already many examples of top athletes using them, but the truth is that those who play in the top divisions today have started late.

Imagine how good a player could become if he started using these tools from the age of 8 or 9 (maybe even earlier).

In addition to all this, it is quite plausible that the companies that develop these softwares can implement a “gamification” component that encourages children to “play” within these virtual environments, while at the same time developing their cognitive, visual, perceptual and decision-making skills.

Finally, this is a type of exercise that does not have to be done in a training context, increasing significantly the efficiency of the time with the coach.

With the increasing popularity of football in the United States, which will only increase in intensity with the 2026 World Cup, and Apple's involvement in this sport, it would not be surprising if the Apple Vision Pro even came with a pre-installed application to train this skill... I look forward to the commission, Tim “Apple”!

That's all for this week. I hope this topic hasn't given you a muscle strain in your neck!

Best regards and a scorpion save from René Higuita,
João Francisco