In a country rich with raw athletic talent, Sports Orange Corners alum Yassine Elkhabbaz harnesses technology to help football players and other athletes unlock their full potential. With Adaa Scouting, Morocco’s first homegrown brand to integrate GPS technology into player performance tracking, Yassine combines his passion for sports with innovation to turn Morocco’s talents into professional athletes. We sat down with Yassine to explore how Adaa Scouting is using sports and technology to create new opportunities for young people and drive positive change.
Hi Yassine! Could you introduce yourself and your business, Adaa Scouting?
I’m Yassine, 32 years old and I’m the founder of Adaa Scouting – the first Moroccan brand to integrate GPS technology for player performance tracking. We started about a year ago, and we already signed two contracts with two professional football clubs in the Moroccan second division. I’m a software engineer with 10 years of experience in development, and I’m also a former football player. My father is also a former professional football player, and now a professional coach in Morocco.
Does he use your technology?
Of course! He uses the systems with his own team, which helped me further develop the technology. He’s heavily involved in Adaa Scouting, and I also have a number of analysts and developers working with me.
Morocco has many talent, but we don’t manage their performance as well as we could
Yassine Elkhabbaz, Adaa Scouting
What does your tracker do?
It helps with talent management. In Morocco we have a lot of talent, but many don’t reach their full potential to make it to the professional level and have an international career. Our systems monitor their performance, and then we work with the players to manage their performance up to an international level. And once they’re there, we create professional CVs for the international transfer market. Our system also helps with managing injuries.
We measure a lot of different metrics, like maximum speed, acceleration, distance covered, heart rate and many others. That makes our performance management system suitable for more than just football. It can be applied in American football, rugby.. any collective sports you play outdoors. And we’re currently working on adapting our systems also for indoor sports, like basketball.
And you already signed with two professional teams?
We’ve been working with [names] for a few months now. We help them manage players’ performance to help them win games, and we create professional CVs for their players to help them make international transfers. And one of these teams is currently top of the league in the second division, so we’re very proud to collaborate with them as a young business and contribute to their success. And it’s one of our objectives to help them sell 1 or 2 players to a higher league.
The teams we work with, they’re both teams with a vision, teams who understand that the future of football – and sports in general – is in technology. In general though, Morocco as a country, we don’t have a culture of using technology in sports yet, people aren’t really used to it. For this reason, we want to make our technology as easy as possible to use. One of our main challenges is to make Moroccans believe in technology, convincing them of the importance of managing sports performance.
The future of football – and sports in general – is in technology
Yassine, Adaa Scouting
What are your plans for Adaa Scouting in the nearby future?
I want to include AI in our systems to help us interpret the data we have. That could also potentially be interesting for European or American teams even. They currently still work with data analysts, people who give them an interpretation of the data, but AI could also really help them.
Our goal for the next few years is to enter a partnership with the Royal Moroccan Football Federation and the Royal Moroccan Rugby Federation. And although for now we’re focusing on Morocco, by 2027 we’d like to go international, expand to other African countries. I imagine Nigeria or Kenya could be potentially interesting markets, as there are others who focus on combining sports and technology. So I can see us collaborate with them. And ultimately, I’d like to become one of the world leaders when it comes to systems for performance management. That’s our big dream we work towards.
You’re here today as part of the Sports Orange Corners startup fair at Tibu’s Global Sports Entrepreneurship Week. How’s today and Sports Orange Corners in general been for you?
Before Sports Orange Corners I didn’t have a lot of ideas, and I didn’t know many other sports enterprises. Through Sports Orange Corners I met other entrepreneurs, found potential partners, and also input to make our solution better. The Tibu team also connected us to others in their network we can potentially work with.
And as you saw, there was a lot of interest in our system today. Even the governor of Casablanca stopped by my booth, he was really impressed. He asked about the importance of wearing a GPS, which I explained to him. So I told him what I told you, about how Morocco has many talent, but we don’t manage their performance as well as we could. So when they get an opportunity to join a big team, their performance is not good enough, and they’re rejected.
Football – and sports in general – can offer Moroccan youth so many opportunities. They don’t end up in jail or selling drugs, they’ll be able to make a decent living doing something they love. Because football is love after all. We’re about to create our own academy in Rabat, for talented teenagers who’re experiencing difficulties in life somehow. We’ll manage their performance and help them become professional football players in the 6-7 years to come. Our focus won’t exclusively be on performance though, it’ll also be about morals and values, mental healthcare. All factors that can help them become football professionals in the future.
