Luis Vicente Mateo, project manager of FutbolJobs was interviewed by AS newspaper after the celebration of the fifth edition of the Tryouts Professional FutbolJobs. This is an excerpt of the interview:
Luis Vicente Mateo (Benferri, Alicante, 1985) joined the Valencia Academy during Rufete’s tenure and was later its director for several years, a total of five and a half years at the club. During his time at the club, the Valencia-Singapore trips of the club’s entourage were more frequent. Mateo met twice with Lim in Singapore. The Alicante-born player tells AS about those meetings, his relationship with the owner, his departure from Valencia and his new objectives as project manager of the company FutbolJobs.
-Tell us, how are the new projects you are involved in?
-First of all, I would like to thank Valentín Botella, father and son, for giving me the opportunity to join FutbolJobs, because it is a platform that I think has done a lot, at the level of its target audience, which are all the job offers and employment opportunities that come from the world of soccer. Specifically, I am leading the Tryouts project with great enthusiasm. As a result of this project that we are developing in Spain, we are campaigning to develop them internationally. There are many requests: Armenia has already been announced, from March 8 to 21; we are polishing the agreement with Venezuela, in July; Bahrain, which we will be promoting and organizing, from April 1 to 7? There are projects in Georgia, South Africa, Emirates… where we will try to apply the methodology that we have already applied in the Tryouts in Spain. And then another pioneering project is the first women’s soccer Tryout to be held in Spain next summer. We are very excited and we want it to be a national reference and help the smallest clubs to attract talent from outside Spain.
-How were those Tryouts in Spain?
-Very good sensations. The families, the staff, the human treatment… The boys have already taken their report and the highlights video… And now we are in talks with clubs so that these players have a contract or license with clubs where they have already been testing: Alzira, Benidorm, Hercules … They have been very positive Tryouts, it is the first time we have collected so much information from the boys that will help us to update our databases.
-And is it possible to find that talent off the conventional radar?
-Yes, clubs have come a long way in having databases, big data…. But at the international level there is a lot of soccer, a lot of amateur soccer lost, a lot of players who can’t find that platform that opens a door for them and I think we can be that project that can find that talent. I can give you an example, in the last Tryout held in Alicante there were players of 24 nationalities. Logically the best talents are in the best clubs around the world, but you can find that player who has not had that opportunity or has not been given that facility to progress playing soccer and be able to enhance it to open a door here in Spain.
To read the full interview:
