In these months of negotiations there is often discussion of priority: there are those who choose players with numbers and those who trust only the human eye. The truth, of course, lies in the middle. Let’s see how clubs in Italy and abroad move
Pythagoras taught behind a tent and the particular contributed to charm. The transfer market has an aura of similar mystery and mathematics here too has a role. We talk about it more and more: data that contribute to the selection of players, used algorithms to choose a left back, debates between those who think you can choose a footballer only after seeing it five times live and those who support you can do everything with computers. But how does it actually work? When do data come into action? How are they used?
What are the available data
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Premise: each club has its own method and there are no good rules for everyone. The certainty is that in 2025 having the data is not a problem, if anything it counts as it is used and how it is interpreted. The clubs have statistics from the matches of more and less important championships (cross, passages, recoveries …) and now also tracking data, because the new computer vision algorithms allow you to extract the numbers on athletic performance from the video (courses kilometers, sprints, high intensity kilometers …). The material is very wide.
When they are used
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The first large division is on the moment in which these numbers are used. Many companies use data at the beginning of the selection process. Through statistics, they identify the most interesting profiles and submit them to the scouting area, which analyzes them. Some players are discarded because they are too expensive or because it is technically rejected, on others you deepen your research: you look at them at the video, you consult trusted people and you go to see them at the stadium. Other sports directors use opposite methods. They select the players with classic systems – the observation of person, scouts and trusted men’s relationships – and only subsequently ask the data for approval.
who elaborates them
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The work can be done internally or externally. Some clubs have contracted one or more data analyst, in charge of studying the data to evaluate their players and those of the other teams. In Italy Inter, Como, Parma and Rome are among the teams that have invested more in this direction in recent months or years. Other teams rely on external companies, to which ad hoc research commissioned. AC Milan is a particular case, because it has some internal data analysts and in the past has used the work of Zelus Analytics, a company that was owned by Redbird and in 2024 it was acquired by Teamworks. For Juve, great growth in sight: Comolli alla Toulouse has been a lot of relied on the data and the property, not by chance, also in that case it was Redbird. Italy, however, remains in the second row compared to the German world and above all to the Premier League, in which many clubs have highly developed analytics departments. The City, of course, Chelsea, but also less obvious clubs. Brighton, for example.
What are the feasible searches
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Yes, but how do you get to a list of the best players for a certain role? The quantitative data collected during the games can be combined in infinite ways. An example of research: a analyst can ask the computer to process the data, in order to obtain the names of the midfielders who attack the depth more, or the best defenders to break the line and attack an opponent’s attacker. Classical research concerns comparable. Parma, lost Bonny, can ask the algorithm to look for the most similar players to him. And a sports director in love with Pedri can ask to report the most similar profiles to him and available at an affordable price. It will never be like the original, but for that you have to resign yourself: Pedri, as it reason and treats the ball, is a man with built -in computer.
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