Canadian Football League scouts travel to South America for CFL-Brazilian Combine

AFI | American Football | 03/05/2020

Graphic: Igor Lazarevic

The Canadian Football League Global scouting contingent makes its way to Belo Horizonte, Brazil this weekend for the second to last Global CFL Combine.

In cooperation with the Confederação Brasileira de Futebol Americano, CFL Director of Global Scouting, Greg Quick, along with CFL CFO and Director of Football Operations Greg Dick, Senior Director of Football Operations Ryan Janzen and Lawrence Hopper from Football Operations, will evaluate 18 athletes hoping to be added to a CFL roster.

A total of nine combines have been held so far as the CFL crews have literally crisscrossed the globe to hunt for players who could make it onto a CFL roster. Over the course of the past two months, starting in Sweden and Finland, Quick & Co. have assessed over 200 athletes and selected to date 35 to attend the CFL Combine in Toronto March 26-28.

This has been painstaking work but to Quick hugely rewarding and educational:

“We have discovered that apart from the competitive nature that joins these young men, there is a difference in sports culture, from one country to another. Just as there are cultural differences between societies. One of the challenges is recognizing this and being able to take it into account when evaluating them.”

The group started this incredible journey in Sweden and Finland and then moved on to France, Great Britain, Italy, and Germany and continued to Japan where two combines were held, one in Tokyo and the other in Osaka. Last week they assessed the talents of players from Denmark, Norway and the Czech Republic at the Danish combine. Following the combine in Brazil, they head to Mexico for the final stop on this historic worldwide tour.

These combines are designed to assess and measure the size, speed, athletic ability, and football skills of top players from outside Canada and the United States who have aspirations of playing professionally in Canada.

The 2020 CFL Combine will feature global prospects competing alongside their Canadian counterparts from U SPORTS, the NCAA and junior football. The league’s biggest scouting event will be followed by two separate drafts in the spring – one for global players and one for Canadians. These combines represent a tremendous opportunity for these players who would otherwise never have had a chance to showcase their skills in front of professional scouts.

In 2019, the CFL featured designated ‘global players’ from countries outside the U.S. and Canada on its nine member clubs – a first for the league. This coming season, the number of global players per team will grow from up to three to five.

As the CFL continues to deepen its international footprint and introduce new pathways for Canadians to play, it has also partnered with the leading gridiron football federations and leagues in Austria, Den mark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and Great Britain and is in ongoing discussions with others.