Analytics FC Podcast

Tofa Fakunle is currently the assistant General Manager at Canadian Premier League cub, Cavalry FC. Before this current role, he was the football operations manager at the same club, and then before that, a professional player. Based in Calgary, Cavalry FC are one of 8 teams that compete in CPL, which is a relatively new league, having only started in 2019. The league is the only professional leag...

Ricardo Moreira currently is General Manager and Sporting Director at MLS club Orlando City SC. Now in his 7th year at Orlando, Ricardo joined from another MLS side, Columbus Crew, as Orlando's head of recruitment. Ricardo is highly knowledgeable when it comes to building squads around the constraints and regulations that MLS sides must contend with. In this conversation we touch on a few of those...

Ryan Beale is the CEO and co-founder of sports AI company Sentient Sports. After completing a degree in computer science, Ryan went on to do a PhD in Artificial Intelligence. Like many others, he was very keen to combine this skillset with his passion of football and one of the first ways he did this was via Fantasy Football. From there, Ryan raised capital to fund his startup, and now Sentient Sp...

Nikos Overheul is an experienced football scouting and strategy professional who has spent time working with various clubs around the world. Nikos was actually involved with Brentford FC in the early days of their data revolution and since then, spent time with Statsbomb, and Vancouver Whitecaps in the MLS. As well as this, Nikos has also operated as a consultant, aiding teams in their recruitment...

David Ray is currently Head of Finance at Championship football club, Plymouth Argyle. His role is a really interesting one, as it seems he is much more involved with the typical performance and recruitment aspects of the club that a typical head of finance would be elsewhere. David speaks about the transfer committee they have, how they model and forecast the club’s income to ensure they can rema...

Gregg Broughton is the new Sporting Director at MLS side Chicago Fire, having previously held the same role at Blackburn Rovers FC in the English Championship. Gregg has vast amounts of experience when it comes to player development, squad building and leadership. Prior to Blackburn Rovers, Gregg spent time as head of player development at Norwegian side FK Bodø/Glimt after spells as academy manag...

Devin Pleuler is currently director of research and development at Toronto based multi-club ownership group, MLSE. Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment have a portfolio of clubs across football, basketball, ice hockey, Canadian football, and even esports. Devin’s role is to oversee each of the analytics departments and also stay on top of exciting trends and opportunities within the world of sports a...

This month, Analytics FC teams up with Ankura Consulting Group, an independent global expert services and advisory firm, to discuss the process and pitfalls of acquiring a football club. Alex is joined by Analytics FC CEO Jeremy Steele and Ankura's Jonny Gray and Jon Brown to discuss their new partnership.

This month, Alex spoke to Dan Micciche. Dan is widely regarded as a coaching innovator whose career has encompassed stints at the FA, coaching England youth teams, Arsenal, MK Dons, and most recently, Crawley Town. Dan talks about the England DNA approach, football and language, and how to create a set-up that fosters creative coaching. You can find Dan on LinkedIn - he is smart enough to avoid Tw...

This month, we spoke to Brexitball expert Andy Watson and immigration lawyer and senior partner at Fragomen LLP, John Kiely, about Analytics FC's ground-breaking new report. The report examines the impact of the GBE regulations on the British transfer market. The pod discusses, among other things, the difference between the English and Scottish markets, the impact on the Women's game, and breaks d...

This month, we spoke to Mike D’Auria, Chief Commercial Officer at Second Spectrum, a tracking and analytics provider working in, among others, the NBA and the Premier League. In our chat, we talked about how Mike came to work in the analytics space, what Second Spectrum do, and how clubs and media organizations are harnessing the power of tracking data to improve understanding of the game, which c...

This month, we spoke to Elliott Stapley, a software engineer working on the match engine and data for Sports Interactive’s Football Manager game. During our conversation, we talked about how the Football Manager match engine works, how Sports Interactive use data benchmarking to guarantee the realism of Football Manager, and considered what Football Manager can teach us about the game in real life...

This month, we spoke to David Sumpter. David is Professor of Applied Mathematics at Uppsala University, the author of a number of books about data analytics, and the co-founder of football analytics company, Twelve Football. He also works for Hammarby in the Swedish Allsvenskan. In the course of the conversation, David talked at length about the use of tracking data within football analysis, the i...

This month, we spoke to Justinas Gasiunas, the first-team goalkeeping coach at Hajduk Split. After ending his career as a goalkeeper, Justinas has coached with a number of clubs including Brighton and Hove Albion and Brentford. In the conversation, we talked about the development of goalkeeping analysis, Justinas's processes for analysing opponents ahead of games, and the future of goalkeeping ana...

This month, we spoke to Kim McCauley, Director of Analytics at Angel City Football Club. Starting off working in the media, Kim has spent the last year or so setting up an analytics department at one of the newest clubs in the world. In our chat, we talked about implementing a data strategy from scratch at a club that has no players, working towards an NWSL and NCAA expansion draft, and how the ca...

This month, we spoke to Oliver Seitz, business intelligence director of United World. During his career, Oliver has worked with agents and clubs, he has completed a PhD and lectured on the topic of football business, he has worked on the scouting side of the industry, with coaching staff and with ownership groups. This depth of experience led to a very insightful conversation. In the course of the...

This week, we spoke to Richard Battle, founding director of Left Field Football Consulting. In the conversation, we talked about the processes of implementing data strategies within football, the importance of getting data buy-in at the highest levels, and what the future of data in the football industry looks like. To find out more about Left Field Football Consulting, visit their website: www.le...

This week, Jon spoke to Peter McKeever, Data analyst at StatsPerform and Data Visualisation Editor for Opta’s new website, The Analyst. In their conversation, they talked about the importance of visualising data within the football industry, the challenges faced by visualisers and how the industry can use visualisation better.. Peter is on Twitter @petermckeever and you can read The Analyst at the...

This week, Jon spoke to Oliver Gage, the director of football for the Canadian Premier League. Originally from Sheffield, Oliver’s career has carried him to North America via Leeds Met University and Sheffield Wednesday. Working as an analyst, he spent time with Houston Dynamo before joining the newly-founded Canadian Premier League as their director of football in 2019. In their conversation, the...

This week, we spoke to Hugo Schoukens and Jo van Hoecke, the co-founders of Double Pass, a Belgian company that assesses, advises and educates (con)federations, leagues, clubs and individuals on optimising their talent development. We focused on their work assessing football academies and asked what impact the auditing process can have on a club’s academy production. If you want to find out more a...

This week, we spoke to Alex Farnell, an economics researcher at the University of Lancaster looking into labour markets and issues to do with personnel, specifically using data from professional sports to illustrate. We focused on his work investigating the contribution of Head Coaches to the success of football teams, and whether changing coaches brings the desired change to performance. His othe...

This week, Jon spoke to Tal Brown, co-founder and CEO of Zone7. We talked about the problem of predicting injuries in sport, the impact of coronavirus on injury and the future of big data in the sports medical sphere. Through Zone7, Tal and his team develop and apply proprietary artificial intelligence to help athletes, coaches and medical teams forecast injury risk and attain peak performance. He...

On the Analytics FC podcast, we’ll be putting out episodes every month with a thematic focus from using data to analyse injuries to quantifying the cognitive aspect of football, from working with agents to the use of tracking data. This week I spoke to Tom Worville about Analytics and the media, focusing on the challenges faced by presenting data to a public audience and asking what, if anything,...

Joel and Jeremy are joined by Christofer Clemens, the German national team's head of match analysis and scouting. Tweet us! www.twitter.com/AnalyticsFC Find Joel and Bobby on twitter: Joel www.twitter.com/MessiSeconds Bobby www.twitter.com/BobbyGardiner --------------- Intro music is MMHHMM by LiamLRY. Logo created by Erik Wagner from the Noun Project.

We put your twitter questions to Brentford FC's Xarius Desai! Check out our previous podcast with Xarius here: https://soundcloud.com/analytics-fc-podcast/xarius-desai Tweet us! www.twitter.com/AnalyticsFC Find Joel and Bobby on twitter: Joel www.twitter.com/MessiSeconds Bobby www.twitter.com/BobbyGardiner --------------- Links from pod: OneShortCorner https://oneshortcorner.wordpress.com/ Statsbo...