Joe Bertuzzi's Soccer Scouting Guide ($10), published by Reedswain, is a notebook used to document an opponents style of play, strengths and weaknesses.  The book contains a scouting shorthand and worksheets covering most aspects of the game.

The book provides a quick introduction to the need for scouting and the shorthand used to complete the templates.  A quote from the introduction best describes the mentality of the book.  Bertuzzi states "Preparation is part of the game.  Find a way to scout and you have FOUND A WAY TO WIN!"

The Soccer Scouting Guide is split into assessment areas and provides a series of questions to facilitate and standardize the analysis.  These questions break down the topics into strengths and weakness.  The sections include:

• Goalkeeping
• System of Play
• Player Assessment
• Attacking Tactics
• Restarts
• Scoring
• Defensive Tactics

The book is targeted at professional/pro-am coaches.  It assumes a fairly high level of soccer knowledge on the part of the reader.  That assumption is not expressed as jargon or obscure references, but the information on "how" to find the answers to the questions is missing.  It also assumes that coaches or staff have time and access to watch full games prior to playing an opponent.  The information gathered in these scouting trips can be invaluable.  Combine several seasons worth of reports and a coach can build complete player profiles, coaching tendencies, team culture, etc.  None of which is covered in the book.

In general, I was very disappointed with Joe Bertuzzi's Soccer Scouting Guide.  Mostly, I expected more - more content, more insight, more instruction, more approaches, et al.  At 35 pages including introduction, this review is almost as long as the book.  Of those 35 pages, 4 are the table of contents and introduction; just over 10 are actual content; the remainder is 4 copies of the scouting worksheets.  The worksheets even have the same misspelled words each time.

This work appears more like a vanity publishing piece than a real instruction manual.  We hope that profits from this edition are directed at more content and better editing for the next edition.

Joe Bertuzzi holds both a USSF "B" and NSCAA Advanced Coaching licenses.  Reedswain (www.reedswain.com) publishes a variety of books and videos/dvds related to soccer.