It is a crisp afternoon in the Midlands at the home of Northern Premier League side Ilkeston Town and 64 unsigned young players are being put through their paces in front of scouts from some of the biggest football clubs in the country.
They are there because of an app. Through Tonsser, the hive mind of the amateur football community has lifted up these boys, aged 14 to 16, picking out the stars from each match, using stats and video to build a detailed picture of the best players around.
The concept works. As long ago as 2019, a scratch team assembled by Tonsser drew with Paris Saint-Germain’s youth team. It is the power of numbers. In France, the app has over million users. In England, it is growing and the smart ones see the potential.
Leeds were the eventual winners of the Tonsser United Final 4 mini-tournament
Brentford owner Matthew Benham is an investor. Rasmus Ankersen, once of Brentford, now in a leadership role at Southampton, is an advocate, talking of the possibility of creating ‘the world’s largest feeder club.’ Bees midfielder Christian Norgaard is in too.
Speaking to Norgaard about these trial days back in 2022, he explained: “You have a number of players who did not get that first contract, they are hanging by a thread trying to make it as a football player. They give it everything in these tournaments.
“Whereas, the youth players at big academies, I am not saying they are thinking they have already made it at 14, 15 or 16, but they are probably already looking at a big contract. Maybe they do not have the same motivation as the Tonsser players.”
In the Ilkeston cold, in front of a sign with the Latin words labor omnia vincit – work conquers all – the motivation is evident, the air alive with possibility. The mood is light-hearted but the veneer is thin because dreams risk being dashed. Stakes are high.
Players aged 14 to 16 prepared for the tournament at Ilkeston Town Football Club
Among the 64 hopefuls is Fin Jenkins, one of the four 14-year-old players to have come through a pre-trial. His father Alan is watching from the touchline, having taken time off work from his electrical business to make the four-hour drive up from Canterbury.
Alongside Alan, looking a little more reserved are a group of studious scouts. It is not only Southampton represented but Manchester City, Arsenal, Newcastle United and Leicester City doing their due diligence, ensuring that no talent has been missed.
It is always a possibility that they have slipped through the net, unknown to the academy system entirely. “Maybe they have been a swimmer, focused on other sports,” says one veteran scout on condition of anonymity, not authorised to speak for his club.
Jenkins himself falls into that category, a boy more interested in kickboxing than football until recently. There is a window of opportunity to be spotted and make the switch – but it is small. “The curve gets steeper,” says the scout. By 17, that window is all but shut.
Tonsser is incredibly effective at identifying talent and, over a decade in now, has the record to prove it. But these experienced scouts are still looking for different qualities to those identified by the statistics and even the powerful peer-review process of the app.
They are looking for evidence of a readiness for the professional game – and the clues are there before a ball is kicked. The players are being judged even during a boisterous warm-up in which players celebrate the best skills on show with an impromptu pile-on.
The camaraderie between the players was a feature of the afternoon in Ilkeston
Ebenezer Vita is wearing the No 6 shirt for the London team – the other three 16-player squads represent Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds. He is part of the fun but he is also encouraging others, retrieving loose balls, jogging on the spot as others stand still.
His attitude is clocked, albeit with a caveat. “I have seen players train well and then do nothing in a game and vice-versa,” says another world-weary scout. With that, the pack move as one to the corner stand for the highest vantage point to observe the games.
Their focus is as much on what happens off the ball as on it, particularly when trying to judge players they know little about who are likely to have very few touches. The trial is being sponsored by STATSports so the players are all given their tracking data.
But the scouts are assessing positioning and personality traits. What is their reaction when there is a turnover of possession or when a goal goes in against them? For the London team, that happens twice as they lose 2-0 to Birmingham in the first match.
Omar Ganesi, a 16-year-old Gambian national, one of eight players from Birmingham United represented, scores a fine goal. “Nobody wants to defend,” complains one scout, a comment that feels as much aimed at the modern game as the trial going on.
To this relatively untrained eye, the standard of the second game, between Manchester and Leeds, appears a little higher. There is a team spirit among the Leeds outfit, helped by the fact that a number of them also play for the same club, Whitkirk Wanderers.
Premier League clubs were watching some of the country’s most talented unsigned players
Harvey Thomas, the Leeds No 7, catches the eye physically and technically, scoring a brilliant goal. The assembled scouts are unmoved, a well-practiced insouciance, unwilling to let their counterparts know whether they have been sufficiently impressed.
All agree that the afternoon has been productive, the success of Tonsser perhaps best illustrated by founder Peter Holm being busy in the United States for discussions with the NBA having tested a basketball app prototype in 2024 as part of NBA Launchpad.
The future for Tonsser is exciting. All these players can do is wait.
