When a football club’s star signing is a data analyst, you know something’s up.
The phenomenon, in fact, is now common among football clubs worldwide. Bottom, middle, or top tier, clubs now heavily invest in data analytics for the same reason, say, investment banks do: to make more accurate, wide-ranging predictions; to track progress; to gain a competitive edge.
Those who have seen the Oscar-nominated film “Moneyball,” you know what we are talking about.
For the rest, understand that intuition in football, on and off the field, is important. But it’s overrated.
Data is the future of football. And of sports, for that matter.
Numbers provide a measure of true potential. Insights tell us how to tap it. But, as we’ll find out, only if you know what you’re looking for.
The rise of data-driven football
Take Michael Edwards, for example.
Edwards is the sporting director of Liverpool Football Club, the English Premier League’s most decorated club. And he is renowned, almost worshiped by his club’s fans, for leveraging data analytics to sign players.
In the last few years, Edwards has negotiated deals for players like Sadio Mane, Mohamed Salah, and Virgil van Dijk. These players were critical to the club’s historic run of winning the Premier League, Champions League (a Europe-only league of the best of the best), and the Club World Cup.
When signed, the players, except perhaps van Dijk, were deemed better than average, and therefore cost the club, in aggregate, just north of 160 million USD.
Today, they are considered world-beaters. For the 2019-2020 season, the three ranked 4th, 5th, and 2nd, respectively, in the rankings of the Ballon d’Or — football’s highest annual honor. At their peaks, their joint valuation crossed 450 million USD.
That’s quite the bargain if you ask us.
The point is, Edwards and his team of world-class analysts used data-driven metrics and KPIs to scout these players for years, identifying their less-known but astronomic potential before anyone else.
What’s remarkable is that this was also the fate for several other Liverpool players Edwards helped sign, like Andrew Robertson and Fabinho.
As a result, Liverpool has earned the badge of “making superstars, not buying them.”
That said, Liverpool’s outrageous deals and data-driven success shouldn’t come as a surprise to those who know its owners.
Liverpool Football Club is owned by Fenway Sports Group (FSG), the sports investment giant that also owns Boston Red Sox, the baseball club that pioneered the data-driven model to run a sports enterprise.
The American investors took the algorithmic approach at the heart of their baseball empire and applied it to the English football club.
The wild success of their structured and fact-based model couldn’t be more evident. And everyone wants in.