There are a special breed of of people that will change the way transfers and recruitment in football are done for years to come, according to Real Analytics’ Ian McHale, also a professor of sports analytics at the University of Liverpool.
The appointment of Laurie Shaw as lead AI scientist at the City Football Group, the parent company of Manchester City, is a signal that this shift has already begun.
Shaw, formerly an astrophysicist at Yale University, left his role as a research scientist and lecturer at Harvard University to join last season’s treble winners in 2021.
Astrophysicists are better known for studying black holes than football but could they, and other highly qualified scientists and mathematicians, really become key figures at Premier League clubs?
“I think this will happen eventually, and it will certainly be the case that the quants [short for quantitative analysts] are listened to,” McHale tells Sky Sports as part of the Future of Football series.
Being a brainiac or a genius won’t be enough, though.
Like Shaw, who specialised in data analysis of team sports at Harvard, McHale explains that clubs will need people that can combine a technical understanding with a love of the sport.
“These unicorns, they do exist, I’d like to think we have them at Real Analytics,” says McHale. “Those will be the people who you will eventually need on the board, or helping the board, and the people who sign the cheques, to make better decisions.”
Jens Melvang, a former footballer now working as senior product manager at Stats Perform, the parent company of Opta, shares a similar perspective. Part of his role is translating the more technical aspects of the data they produce for coaches at football clubs. However, integration, it would seem, is not always easy.
“I often see that data scientists can be isolated at clubs,” he tells Sky Sports. “That’s a shame because they are adding a lot of value. So the biggest obstacle is making sure these more technical people are part of the process.”
Football, apparently, hasn’t quite woken up to the full power of the resources at its disposal. Here, Sky Sports takes a look at those putting science, data and innovation at the heart of their decision-making in transfers and recruitment.
Could a brain test determine an elite player?
What sets an elite footballer apart? That was the question Eric Castien, the founder of BrainsFirst, posed to scouts at Barcelona and Real Madrid as part of his research for a book he was writing about talent identification in 2011.
There was an agreement across the board that talent can be broken down into four elements: technical, tactical, physical and mental. But there was another, rather unfathomable, fifth aspect.
“Some of them call it magic, others the black box,” Castien, a former journalist, tells Sky Sports. “You either have it or you don’t.
“When I asked them to point to it on their bodies, they said, ‘Definitely it is here in between the ears’. I said, ‘Ok, maybe it is brain function’. They said, ‘Maybe you are right, but we don’t have the understanding of this’.”
Castien took this theory to neuroscientists whom he had interviewed for his book. Somewhat bemused by the suggestion of magic, they agreed with his hypothesis about brain function.
They needed four years to show they could pinpoint the brain functions needed to be a top player and a further six to demonstrate they could use it to predict the future.
Now youth team players at clubs in Europe, like AZ Alkmaar and PSV Eindhoven, are having their cognitive performance measured with brain tests to establish if they have what it takes to be elite footballers. BrainsFirst are measuring magic.
“Today we understand that cognitive performance is as crucial as physical performance for football,” Castien, whose role was to bridge the gap between football and neuroscience, explains.
“We now have the research to understand what football at the elite level requires from the human brain. If you have an assessment of someone’s brain you can compare that benchmark with their threshold levels. If you understand threshold levels and the brain scores then you have a match or not.”
Both clubs’ youth academies have experienced great success off the back of this partnership. AZ Alkmaar lifted the UEFA Youth League in April and Jong PSV were crowned Premier League International Cup winners in May.
Jurrit Sanders, the lead sport scientist at PSV’s academy, tells Sky Sports the cognitive tests are helping the club understand “a new piece of the puzzle in football”.
“The programming and the training we deliver are much more detailed now than before,” he adds, “especially when we are focusing more and more on the individual athletes and individual programming based on outstanding skills.”
Once a young footballer crosses the threshold at PSV’s facility one of the first priorities is getting their brains tested.