Don't just watch? Learn the other side of football

From the stands, you know exactly which player the team needs. You manage a volunteer club and stumble upon tax law, sponsors, and the question of who handles Instagram. Or you've played yourself and want to stay in football — just on the other side.

Many have the feeling that they can do more than just watch. What's often missing isn't passion. It's the craft.

This is exactly where the International Football Institute comes in. Two part-time courses start in November 2026 in Vienna, both limited to 30 places. The application deadline is October 18, 2026.

The Big Picture: IFI Clubmanager Austria

€1,790 — for LAOLA1 users €1,590 (mention Laola x IFI upon registration)

A football club is a medium-sized enterprise with emotions at its core. The Clubmanager course is your first real insight into this professional world — sporting, economic, and communicative.

Sport & Team Leadership covers coach selection, scouting, squad planning, and negotiation training. Economics & Law deals with transfer management, finance, club and tax law, and sponsoring — the part that saves you from expensive mistakes due to lack of knowledge. Marketing & Communication covers social media, event management, and press relations, because today every club is also a small media house.

Three modules, each with two in-person days at football locations throughout Austria, six to nine months, completely alongside your job.

Dates: Nov 27–28, 2026 · Jan 15–16, 2027 · Feb 19–20, 2027

Who teaches: Manuel Ortlechner, former Sporting Director of Wiener Austria, brings the sporting leadership perspective. Matthias Gebauer, former Commercial Director at SKN St. Pölten, explains the business administration side of a Bundesliga club. Lawyer and player agent Stefan Weishaupt shows where the pitfalls lie in contracts. And Sky presenter Michael Ganhör practices with you how to succeed on the other side of the microphone.

All course info: international-football-institute.com/ifi-clubmanager-oesterreich

Into Professional Football: CAS Scout & Squad Planner

€3,465

At a U16 match, you know after twenty minutes who will be a professional in five years? Great. But can you justify it in a way that a sporting director will act on it?

Here, we delve deep. Three modules, six sub-modules, nine in-person days in Vienna Seestadt — and by the end, you won't just know who you'd sign, but also why.

Modern Squad Planning. It starts with the honest question of what a scout actually needs to be able to do — including self-reflection on one's own areas of development. Afterwards, you learn to derive position-specific requirement profiles from your club's playing philosophy and principles, instead of just noting "fast winger." This is complemented by data-driven approaches based on event and tracking data, and the question of how to combine live, video, and data scouting into a framework that truly works — including current technologies and how much of it can be automated.

Top Talent Scouting. What exactly is sporting talent? The entire journey from talent diagnosis, identification, and discovery to selection, including the opportunities and limitations of traditional selection processes. Plus, the uncomfortable truth about one's own perceptual errors — keyword Relative Age Effect, which still systematically favors the wrong players in youth development. The second part focuses on what happens after identification: how a talent truly develops into a top performer.

High Level Scouting & Recruitment. Squad planning in youth academies, in the transition phase, and in professional football are three completely different games. This is worked through using concrete case studies and from the perspective of the sporting directorate, head scout, and coaching team — with strategies against irrational decisions and for a better success rate in signings. And then the transfer itself: legal framework, contract design, and the tension between four parties — player, acquiring club, selling club, agent. Including a change of perspective into the role of a player agent, because you understand a game better when you know it from both sides.

Who teaches: Julius Nagel, former Global Player Scouting Lead at Puma worldwide and former Squad Planner in Aalborg. Eren Yilmaz coordinates top talents at Borussia Dortmund, Paul Tolasz heads scouting at the VfB Stuttgart academy. Manuel Takacs leads the academy of Wiener Austria, Benjamin Schunk was Technical Director at Sturm Graz. Also joining are Manuel Ortlechner (former Sporting Director FK Austria Wien) as well as Marc André Kriegl and Laurent Burkart from player agency B360.

Dates: Nov 18–20, 2026 · Jan 20–22, 2027 · Mar 17–19, 2027

All course info: international-football-institute.com/scout-und-kaderplaner

Which one is yours?

The Clubmanager, if you want to know how a club functions as a whole. The CAS Scout & Squad Planner, if your place is on the sideline with a notepad.