If we want to focus on low cost gambles then best ignore Brazil and to an extent Argentina, and target the other South American nations like Uruguay of Araujo and Ecuador/others as Brighton.
Yes, I've said this before. Uruguay for strikers and CBs and Ecuador for midfielders and CBs as well. Well, we don't really need a CB urgently for the first team anymore so could take an easy gamble for Barca B with one of those less expensive kids and who knows maybe we can get another Araujo.
One thing to mention though, it was reported in Sport or MD (don't know where) a week or so ago that we have send one of our scouts to Copa Sudamericano U20 and after looking at that guy (Jose Manuel Barla) he was previously a scout for his hometown team Cadiz (where he also spend almost his all playing career) and also as (assistant) manager for Real Jaen. Who knows, maybe he's good at his job and I'm unfair to him but just looks to me like our scouts in general lack in experience working for clubs on at least somewhere near the level we should be.
Another thing said in that article was that City send 5 of their scouts to South America and we know they've signed a lot of players for cheap from there in last few years. Not sure how many of them will really make it but if nothing else can sell them for overall profit and reinvest that money into more youngsters. And if you hit with one player like Julian Alvarez (who looks like a big success so far although his career can still go downwards) then you don't really mind if you miss on 5 or 10 others. Not when you can afford that like City clearly can. I know we can't really compete with them financially but could still learn some things from them and maybe we'd get more Araujos and less Gustavo Maias.
Are we following this kid for example?
https://twitter.com/FootballReprt/status/1621625537411031042
I know one great goal doesn't make him a great talent as everyone can score occasional bangers. But he's also a joint second best scorer of the competition after Vitor Roque. Don't know enough about either of them to compare but I'm sure he would be a lot cheaper. Probably like 20m or 30m cheaper. Which doesn't mean we shouldn't sign Roque if we truly believe in him but maybe at the same time can also take a flier on this Uruguayan kid as well.
But we shouldn't really compare him to Roque (who ofc needs to be in our focus if we plan to spend 30m on him) but rather how he is compared to Lucas Roman (who I kind of like based on his highlights) who we've just signed. They are probably in a similar price range but how much did we know about each of them before deciding to sign the Argentinian rather than the Uruguayan. Better infos you have on the player more likely you are to evaluate him better but ofc you can still make wrong decisions. It happens all the time to all clubs, not just Barca.
After South America we have Asia. Japan and South Korea especially have both produced some quality technical players with good attitude and work ethic as well. Definitely worth folllowing but how extensively are we doing that?
Africa is another continent worth scouting more imo. Right now there is CHAN (African Nations Championship - not to be confused with more known Africa Cup of Nations) going on that most people probably don't even know about. Only players from domestic leagues play in this competition. You never know when/where you can get some hidden gem but I wonder if our scouts are even aware of this competition and if other big clubs have send their people to Algeria. But can be sure that scouts from developing/selling clubs like Salzburg, Ajax and many others probably already have some of those players on their radars. Pretty sure most of these players will never make it to Europe (or at least make it to a high enough level for average people to hear about them) but if you're "lucky" you can find the next Mane or Koulibaly from Senegal before other clubs. I know they've both started their career in France (like most of players playing for good African NTs who have never actually played in their domestic leagues) so probably not the best example but you get my point.