Liverpool are leading the way in world football when it comes to data analytics.
That’s according to Athletic Bilbao director of football Ignacio Palacios-Huerta, who is also a professor at the London School of Economics.
“There is clear leadership by one club: Liverpool. They have a group of four or five PhDs in maths and physics, and they know football,” he said.
The quotes from a lengthy piece in the Financial Times, which actually focusses on Barcelona’s ‘innovation hub’ and their multi-million euro attempts for marginal gains by employing hundreds of analysts – which includes scouting, current player and opposition analysis – amongst other things.
Liverpool are referenced as the benchmark though, which is a huge testament to FSG and the manner in which they’ve recruited.
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Not only did they get Jurgen Klopp and his backroom staff in, but they saw something in Michael Edwards and the relevance of what was previously described as our ‘transfer committee’.
Brendan Rodgers couldn’t work with one, but the fact Klopp has embraced it and got incredible rewards from working as part of a transfer team shows that perhaps the Northern Irishman’s ego was part of the problem.
In the past few years, we’ve acquired Sadio Mane, Gini Wijnaldum, Mo Salah, Andy Robertson, Virgil van Dijk, Alisson, Fabinho and countless others by analysing statistics, attributes and using more modern scouting methods – while also focussing on the personality, age and style of the player in regard to our footballing philosophy.
If we can secure the Premier League title this year – this will be a huge part of the reason.