Dave Warrington, a lifelong football scout, has written his memories that highlight players Everton should and shouldn’t have gone for…
This article by Oliver Kay in The Athletic dwells on the anguish that Everton could have signed Rodri rather than Yerri Mina, if only they’d listened to this man.
“He stood out so much,” Worthington says. “He could do everything and play anywhere — not just midfield but at the back, across any of the defensive positions. I’m pretty sure I saw him play up front in one game. Had the lot as far as I was concerned. A clever, clever footballer.”
It is natural to wonder whether Everton were really in a position to sign Rodri, given he ended up rejoining Atletico Madrid later that year in a deal worth an initial €20M (£17.4M/$23.3M at today’s exchange rates).
But this was near the height of the Merseyside club’s spending under Farhad Moshiri’s ownership. What’s more, they spent €30M that summer on Barcelona and Colombia defender Yerry Mina — a player Worthington had, after scouting him extensively, specifically advised them against signing, warning that his aerial threat from set-pieces did not outweigh the reservations the scout had about other areas of his game.
All of that came at a time when Worthington could feel the tide of opinion turning against older scouts and traditional methods. He didn’t last much longer at Everton, out of tune with a regime that on one hand extolled the virtues of a more sophisticated approach to player identification and on the other seemed to be driven by the whims of Moshiri.