Can I talk to a player who comes up to me after a match?

Answering a question is not the same as taking the initiative. But if it turns into a conversation about a club change or a trial, refer to the order: the player speaks to their own club first. And if the player is a minor, the guardian should be involved from the start, not informed afterwards.

We want to invite players to an open trial. Do we have to go through the clubs?

An open invitation aimed at everyone, which the player signs up to themselves, is a different thing from contacting a named player at a particular club. What makes an invitation improper is that it singles out a player. If the player is a minor the guardian should register or approve, and the current club should know they are taking part.

What happens if we break the rules by accident?

Contact the other club and the district association yourselves rather than waiting. Breaches corrected by whoever made them are handled differently from those that surface through a report, and the agent regulations carry substantial sanctions for breaches of the rules protecting minors.

For scouts

Contacting a young player: what the rules are

9 min read

Assume that first contact always runs from the player to the player’s own club, and onwards from there. Almost everything that goes wrong in this area goes wrong because somebody reverses that order — usually with good intentions and a friendly message.

The order of contact, in four steps

The order is fixed and applies both to a club change and to a single invitation to a trial.

1. The player or guardian contacts their current club.
2. The player or guardian contacts the new club.
3. The new club contacts the current club.
4. Only then do the conversations continue.

An illegal approach is broader than most people think

An illegal approach means somebody at one club contacting a player at another club with the aim of making them switch. It makes no difference that the contact was friendly, that it concerned only one session, or that you knew the family already. It is the initiative and the direction that decide.

Social media is expressly named as a disallowed channel. A direct message identifying a player at a particular club is not a grey area, and district associations handle that kind of report as a recurring problem rather than as isolated exceptions.

As a club it is worth appointing one person all such contact goes through, and teaching the coaches the order by heart. Most breaches are committed by well-meaning youth coaches who did not know, not by anyone trying to get around anything.

The age limits

Four thresholds govern most of it in Sweden, and they are connected.

A player contract cannot be signed with a player who has not turned 15 — and a club may not even negotiate such a contract with the player or guardian until the player is 14 years and 6 months old.
An agent may not contact the player or guardian before 14 years and 6 months, and then only with the guardian’s written consent. The agent must also have completed FIFA’s specific training for representing minors.
Up to and including the calendar year the player turns 14, they are tied to one club per playing season.
Training compensation is calculated from the calendar year the player turns 12 — that is when club affiliation starts to have a financial value to somebody else.
A guardian’s written approval is a formal requirement for registration and other steps involving minors, not a courtesy.

Trials and going abroad

International transfers of players between 10 and 17 are prohibited as a rule under FIFA’s regulations, and the review also covers the first registration of a foreign minor. The exceptions are few: a family moving for reasons unrelated to football, an EU and EEA exception for 16 to 18-year-olds with strict requirements on schooling and accommodation, or a family living close to the border. Sweden has also written in a narrower reading of the EU exception than FIFA’s minimum.

Inviting a minor to a trial is regulated too, and those rules are less well known than the ban. A trial involving a minor requires an application in advance and approval — a club that cannot show the paperwork has not done it. Contacting a player who already has a contract also requires the current club’s consent.

If you run an academy or a football school

Every minor training in the operation must be reported, including those not registered as players with you. That is easy to miss for players on trial, at a camp or "just training with us" for a while — and those are precisely the cases the rule exists for.

FIFA also places an ongoing duty of care on the club that registers a minor. That is not merely an administrative obligation: the club must ensure the player’s schooling, accommodation and wellbeing are taken care of. In practice it means the question "what happens with school?" should have a prepared answer before it is asked.

Personal data about children

In Sweden the age at which children can consent to online services themselves is 13, set out in the Swedish Data Protection Act. At the same time the privacy authority is clear that children’s personal data merits particular protection, that maturity is to be assessed case by case between 13 and 16, and that profiling of children should be handled restrictively.

What tends to be collected in scouting is also more sensitive than it looks: injuries, test results, health information and school performance. Ask who the data controller is before you start collecting, keep less than you would like, and do not pass on information about a child to a third party because somebody asked for it.

If somebody else breaks the rules

Report it to the district association’s competition committee rather than resolving it in the parents’ group chat or between coaches. Keep screenshots with the date, sender and club. The point is not to punish somebody but for the association to see the pattern — the repeat cases are what makes the rules enforceable.

In Breakout the contact route is built on the same logic as the rules: a scout or coach sends a request, the player themselves accepts or declines it, and the sender never receives an email address, phone number or home address. Players under 13 never appear in search or the radar, players between 13 and 17 are private by default, and accounts applying as a scout or coach are verified manually against uploaded documents before they get access. That does not replace the association’s rules — it just removes the easiest shortcut.

Common follow-up questions

Can I talk to a player who comes up to me after a match?: Answering a question is not the same as taking the initiative. But if it turns into a conversation about a club change or a trial, refer to the order: the player speaks to their own club first. And if the player is a minor, the guardian should be involved from the start, not informed afterwards.
We want to invite players to an open trial. Do we have to go through the clubs?: An open invitation aimed at everyone, which the player signs up to themselves, is a different thing from contacting a named player at a particular club. What makes an invitation improper is that it singles out a player. If the player is a minor the guardian should register or approve, and the current club should know they are taking part.
What happens if we break the rules by accident?: Contact the other club and the district association yourselves rather than waiting. Breaches corrected by whoever made them are handled differently from those that surface through a report, and the agent regulations carry substantial sanctions for breaches of the rules protecting minors.