Nordensa, the world’s first fan-powered football talent scouting platform based in Romania, has urged Zambian clubs, agents, and academies to collaborate with them to help young players get noticed by European clubs using their app.
The app, which launched in September 2022, allows fans to discover the world’s most promising young talent, who have previously been scrutinized by the platform’s team of Premier League and Bundesliga scouts, and purchase shares in a player’s trial contract for EUR 30 (about 831 ZMK) each.
The app also allows fans to win up to 8% of the player’s income for five years for supporting their football dream.
Last year, they signed the world’s first fan-backed footballer to a European club, Cameroon’s Joseph Iyendjock, who now plays for HNK Sibenik in Croatia’s second division after being funded by fans from 25 countries.
In an exclusive interview with BolaNews, Nordensa’s CEO and Founder, Adrian Docea, stated that they aim to collaborate with Zambian teams, agents, and academies to scout talent in the country.
“Zambia should definitely be on our scouting list because we are normally looking at markets that are not already being scouted by big clubs; we are looking at markets that are undercounted,” he said.
“We could work with agents who can recommend us certain players; we could also work with academies directly, and so we encourage academies to get in touch with us.”
Will Nordensa charge Zambian clubs to have their players listed in the app?
Docea stated that Nordensa does not charge anything, but rather allows supporters all around the world to sponsor young players and earn 8% of their income after they are signed by a club.
“We have worked with some very interesting academies in Africa, and we have signed a partnership with them. They are getting everything for free, so they don’t have to worry about costs because we are not charging them anything to scout players and list them for potential transfers in the future.
“So if a club in the first or second league in Zambia wants to contact us and discuss how we can help them identify the right talent and move the right talent to Europe, we are not charging them anything.”
Docea noted that they have had difficulty scouting players from countries such as Zambia due to a lack of quality video footage and hopes that clubs and academies can collaborate with them to make young players’ aspirations of playing in Europe a reality.
“The issue in Southern Africa is that we have one major challenge: access to high-quality video footage. If we can gain access to football games that have been properly captured on video, either with scouting cameras or high-quality TV cameras, so that we can tag and extract data, we can begin scouting from there.
“The African market is our number one priority and it’s not just words; if you look at the players we listed, 100% of them are African players. Most probably, the African market will remain the core market for us in the future,” concluded Docea.
READ MORE: FAZ president Andrew Kamanga and three others arrested over AFCON funds
