11-year-old Cordell has been playing grassroots football since the age of 5. Now aged 11 Cordell and his family decided to sign Cordell up for a UK Football Trials 1-day event and this turned out to be one of the best decisions they ever made. The family had heard of other trial companies but by recommendations from other families chose to attend a UK Football Trials event.

Cordell attended our Leeds trial in February 2024 and was scouted by a massive 5 clubs which were Bradford City, Leeds Utd, Blackburn Rovers, Middlesbrough and Sheffield Utd. To be picked up by this many clubs would tell you that Cordell has all the right attributes as a player and is clearly what scouts are looking for in a player.

We asked a series of questions to Cordell such as what happened once we told you which clubs had scouted you and what happened with the various opportunities for these clubs. Cordell and his family had the following to say…” As soon as we received an email from UK football trials on the same day we started receiving emails and phone calls from all 5 scouts. We got invited to academy trials, some teams for 1 session and some teams for 6-8 weeks trials depending on how much the clubs was interested in Cordell. We had too many clubs to choose from and it can be overwhelming especially when they’re all selling themselves and all seemed pretty good.
After attending the various clubs and seeing what the clubs were like and meeting the coaches we were happy with our final choice.”

Next question was what Cordell felt he learned from his opportunities as well as his family and what they had learnt having not been associated with the academy football structure previously. The family mentioned and had this advice for others too…“We learned that just because your child gets scouted it doesn’t mean that he/she is in the academy. Some get scouted for development/ prospect/ academy. Take your time to go around to meet the coaches and learn the culture of that team before signing your child to the club. We received a lot of guidance on how pro academy clubs work as we had no idea. We now know a lot about being scouted and how many pro academies are run and the impact it can have on the whole family from a financial aspect as well as physically and mentally demanding. It is a massive commitment. “

For our final question we asked if the family would be prepared to recommend UK Football Trials to others and they commented and said…” Yes. There are a lot of scouts from premier league teams to league 2 teams as well as semi-pro and non-league teams all on site and the trials are well run trials.

Cordell Taruvinga – Aged 11 – Scouted by 5 clubs and now in the development centre at Bradford City