For scouts from most Premier League clubs, the Under-17 World Cup at the end of last year was an opportunity to see some of the best young players on the planet in the flesh for the first time. But for a select few such as Brighton and Manchester City, who have been quick to take advantage of football’s increasingly global pool of emerging talent, the tournament in Indonesia was more about crossing fingers and hoping their secrets remained under wraps.
“Whenever a player travels to an international tournament, their clubs understand that there will be a lot of foreign clubs watching them live and that always pushes up the interest,” says Matías Lipman, who works as an intermediary for South American players. “They give them a lot of visibility and the local clubs know it.”
