Newcastle United make major global recruitment move with seven new additions planned

Newcastle are looking to appoint first-team and emerging talent scouts in several countries across Europe and South America.

The Magpies have made significant progress behind the scenes this season with several new recruitment roles created to help bolster the club’s first-team and academy sides.

Since January, the club have been looking to appoint a 13 to 18 UK scouting lead, a head of emerging talent, a recruitment operations manager and a scouting lead at the club’s academy.

As part of sporting director Dan Ashworth’s academy reform, United recently appointed former Manchester City and Leeds United scout Paul Midgley as head of youth recruitment.

Manchester City scout Paul McLaren is set to join the club in a head scouting role. West Ham United academy recruitment manager Delroy Ebanks has been identified to fill a similar role scouting southern England.

But now the club's scouting network is expanding beyond the UK borders as the club looks to appoint up to seven new international scouts.

The club are looking to recruit scouts for France; Germany, Holland and Belgium; Spain and Portugal; Italy, Switzerland and Croatia; Austria, Poland, Czech Republic, Denmark and Serbia; Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador as well as Argentina and Uruguay.

Once the roles have been filled, Newcastle will boast an extensive worldwide recruitment network.

The job description states: “You will act as an ambassador for Newcastle United in your specific region, leading on the identification and assessment of emerging talent and first team targets.

"Working closely with the UK based scouting soordinator and recruitment operations Manager you will recommend appropriate high-quality talent in line with club strategy and process.

“The successful candidate must have extensive demonstrable experience of talent assessment and identification within elite professional football and a strong network in their respective locations.

"Expert knowledge of football including game models, playing styles and profiles of technical, tactical, physical, psychological traits within the potential targets is critical.

“A strong understanding of how understanding data insight can contribute to the development of recruitment and the ability to accurately analyse and assess player potential / ability are essential.”

Newcastle United look to appoint data expert

Newcastle are also looking to appoint an experienced head of data and insight to support the club’s football data team.

The role will involve reporting to sporting director Dan Ashworth and building a ‘world leading’ data and insight department at St James’ Park.

The department will be used to ‘underpin decision making and drive value in the transfer market’.

The job description states the successful candidate will be: “Working closely with our Sporting Director you will develop, implement and maintain data and insight strategies and understand and interpret football data to drive key decisions whilst collaborating effectively with a broader multi-disciplinary team.

“You will have strong communication and negotiation skills to enable collaborative working with 1st team football, recruitment, academy and women’s departments to ensure that data and insights are incorporated into their decision-making processes.

“Previous experience of Azure and Amazon Web Services infrastructure are essential as is a master’s degree in computer science, mathematics, statistics, performance analysis or a related field (or equivalent).”