New transfer model? Why HSV are scouting in Colombia | OneFootball

HSV is casting its net toward Colombia. Several months ago, a scouting trip already took place with a specific idea in mind.

Every professional club is constantly on the lookout for new top talents. At Hamburger SV, the South American market is increasingly coming into focus, and there have already been some small early successes.

As a report by the Hamburger Abendblatt reveals, U19 coach Oliver Krause traveled to Colombia five months ago, among others. Speaking to the newspaper, he praised the openness of the people, the street life in Medellín, and of course the talents he was able to coach there.

The visit to Colombia was made on behalf of HSV, but it was not initially communicated publicly. Now Krause has revealed details about the work with the young footballers: “There were some extremely talented boys there. Many come from difficult backgrounds. For them, this was the opportunity of a lifetime.”

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HSV looks beyond the usual talent pool

The background to the trip was an idea from the German-Colombian recruiting agency One Life. HSV had accompanied the final of a scouting competition. In the end, the Bundesliga club invited two players to Hamburg for a trial.

One was unable to make the trip because he had broken his foot. The other, Miguel Hurtado, trained with HSV’s youth team in August and has now even signed his first professional contract. Of course not with HSV—we all would have noticed that—but with SV Kapfenberg in Austria.

On the one hand, at 21 years old, the center-back was too old to continue being developed in the youth setup. On top of that, he would have had to receive a professional contract immediately in order to obtain a residence permit. Those were also the reasons why FC Nuremberg did not sign him despite a positive trial.

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Even so, the venture should be viewed positively, says Christoph Rohmer, director of the academy, among others, who is also responsible for internationalization. In the future, such partnerships could of course help HSV identify interesting talents in South America as well. At the moment, the focus in youth development is primarily on Hamburg, northern Germany, and northern Europe.

Youth coach Krause also spoke in favor of repeating the trip. He said it is important to develop creative visions for scouting: “There is a lot of talent in South America. For a club like HSV, it is interesting to look for something this way that is not so easy to find in Europe.”

Signings not the primary goal

During his one-week trip to Colombia in March, he said he was impressed by the interest shown by the people: “You could feel everywhere that HSV is very well known and present in Colombia. That surprised us.” Anyone who knows how many members HSV has worldwide across many different nations is probably less likely to be surprised.

However, the goal of this new transfer strategy is not primarily to bring talents directly to Hamburg, but also to acquire knowledge.

Still, it would of course be more than interesting if, at the end of this new scouting path, a Colombian rising star were to find his way directly to the Elbe.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇩🇪 here.