In a world where football scouting has historically relied on experience and gut-feeling, the ‘beautiful game’ has often been out of reach for the majority. For decades, the path to professional football has been built on too many variables - geography, timing, and even social capital. And, of course, that intangible thing called luck. For many across the MENA region, talent was never the issue - visibility was. Thousands of gifted players have lived and retired in the shadows simply because they lacked a bridge to the world of professional football. Grintafy, a ‘super app’ most impactful for its talent discovery, was designed to be that bridge.This is a story decades in the making, however. Long before he was a CEO, founder Majdi Allulu was a kid in Arar, a remote city in northern Saudi Arabia, possessing a level of talent and a love for football that gave him dreams of making it big. But in the pre-digital era, his geography dictated his destiny. "Opportunities were not there," he tells SceneSports. "You had to travel to Jeddah or other larger cities. At that time, I didn’t have the means." He eventually traded his boots for a degree in computer engineering and a 15-year corporate career, but the memory of what could have been remained a quiet, unexpressed ache. The catalyst for what eventually would become Grintafy arrived in 2017, not from a boardroom, but from a father-son moment - and it looked to tackle something much simpler than talent discovery. When his 12-year-old son asked for help looking for and renting a pitch to play on with friends, he realised that even in the digital age, the grassroots game was stuck in the past. "I couldn’t believe that, in 2017, there was no digital platform to find and book pitches," he says. That search sparked the realisation that football needed more than just a booking system; it needed a whole digital home. "Let’s not just do a booking app," he says, recalling his thought process. "Let’s create some sort of talent discovery platform. It started with booking, playing, and then being discovered."
The name ‘Grintafy’ is a nod to the Italian loanword grinta, which echoes across regional pitches to describe grit and tenacity. By adding a digital suffix, he created what many initially labelled as a ‘LinkedIn for footballers’, a space where players could build a Grinta Card - a digital CV featuring match stats, video highlights and performance ratings. While Allulu admits that any scout needs to physically see a player before making a decision, Grintafy seeks to simplify the entire process. "What we do is filter out players," he explains. "Instead of you physically seeing 1,000 players, we show you the top 100." The onboarding process is designed to be as democratic as the game itself. For a young player, the journey starts with a simple smartphone upload. They create a profile, input their physical metrics, and upload clips of their highlights - best goals, saves, or tackles. This data populates their Grinta Card, which is then indexed by age, position and skill set. On the flip side of the interface, the experience for a scout or club representative is akin to a high-powered search engine. Instead of travelling thousands of miles on a hunch, they use filters to find, for example, a left-footed winger under the age of 18 with a specific speed rating in a specific region. With a few taps, they can view a curated shortlist of talent, watch their highlights, and contact them directly through the platform. Building this ecosystem wasn’t easy, however. In 2015, sportstech was a foreign concept to regional investors who were busy chasing fintech and e-commerce. "It was very difficult for me to explain what we do, to tell them about the dream," he recalls, adding that he believes Grintafy walked so that the regional sportstech sector could run. It did not take long for that pace to turn into a sprint. Today, Grintafy has transformed into a football powerhouse with over 2.5 million users globally. It’s now the technological backbone for Saudi Arabia’s national grassroots initiatives, powering platforms for the Ministry of Sport and the Schools League. The platform’s reach has even crossed oceans, leading to partnerships with La Liga clubs Sevilla FC, Levante UD and CD Leganés, as well as Premier League mainstays like West Ham United. "We wanted to capitalise on the stories of Arab talent in the Premier League - Mohamed Salah, Riyad Mahrez, Saïd Benrahma," Allulu explains. "Benrahma, at the time, was playing for West Ham United. So, we wanted to help them find the ‘next Benrahma’." The London-based club, Allulu explains, was targeting the MENA region. "They wanted to expand their reach in the Middle East and we have the Middle East data." This led Grintafy to a scouting blitz: 1,000 players across Saudi Arabia, UAE and Egypt in just two weeks. "It was one of the greatest scouting programmes ever created in the region," he adds. Despite the high-profile deals and the data-driven success, Allulu is careful to define exactly where Grintafy’s role begins and ends. He strictly avoids acting as an agent, choosing instead to be the infrastructure that supports the entire industry. "The moment the player is associated with the club, he’s no longer my user," he explains. "I don’t want to be an enemy to the scouts - I want to be their partner," he says, clearly distancing himself from the often-fraught reputation of agents within the game. As Saudi Arabia sets its sights on the 2034 World Cup, the vision for Grintafy has expanded into a ‘super app’ for everything football - from video content to match predictions. But at its core, it remains a tool for the dreamers. "We’re planning for the 2030 and 2040 World Cups because we strongly believe that some of our players will be playing for the national team there," he says. For the kids currently playing in the underserved corners of MENA, the horizon is no longer out of reach. Through a blend of tech, data and grinta, the game is finally becoming as big as the talent within it.