STUDY CASE: BIG DATA IN FOOTBALL

INTRODUCTION

The article highlights Manchester City Football Club's innovative use of data analysis
in football. They follow a different pre-match ritual, the players spend 15 minutes
before each game with the performance analyst team reviewing previous matches,
and examining crosses, ball possession, and strategies. After the match, each player
receives a personalised report, aiming to enhance their performance. Their
data-driven approach has contributed to impressive achievements over the years
helping them to score 9 goals in the first 15 matches.

As we have seen, football managers can use this big data to make better decisions,
in terms of the overall performance of a team and how to help them individually.
Throughout this presentation we are going to see how important data analysis is in
sports, in particular for the Manchester City Football Club, but we will also analyse
whether or not it is appropriate to use only quantitative data.

KEY CONCEPTS

The decision making process involves identifying the problem and choosing a plan of
action. For managers, there are two types of approaches they can take when making
a decision: A rational process, or a non rational process.

On one hand, the rational decision-making process aims to make logical and
optimal decisions using a systematic process. Managers focus on identifying the
problem, think about obvious and creative alternative solutions, evaluate them and
select the more feasible and effective one, and finally they implement it and evaluate
how it worked out. On the other hand, non-rational decision-making involves finding
a solution that is limited to the manager’s ability to use the information they have
during a finite time. It may be influenced by emotions and intuition, which means that
it is not strictly logical, but more situational.

In question number four we are being asked about making a decision based on only
quantitative information in order to evaluate a player’s performance during the
football season. To relate this to the study case, we see how quantitative information
has not only helped Manchester City find out that they were underperforming in the
Premier League, but also understand how they could solve this. The Head of
Performance Analysis at Manchester City Football Club provides each player with a
personalised report that helps players improve their moves on the pitch. For
instance, they studied over 500 corner kicks to understand what leads to scoring a
goal, since they were struggling to do so. After that, the analyst team presented the
best tactics applied by other teams to score from corners, which ended up being
extremely helpful for the team as they started to score more and more.

Quantitative information, or in other words, information received by big data has

facilitated the task of evaluating a player’s performance during a game, the team’s
effectiveness and several other factors. Supporting this, recent research confirms
that a manager is more likely to make a better decision if they utilise these tools
during the decision-making process, because it gives them a very thorough insight of
what is happening with their team during a game.

Nevertheless, there are also researches that find issues with this ‘only data oriented
decision-making’. This perspective assumes that managers possess complete
information of a player, which is not accurate because it is an unemotional analysis,
and as everything in life, emotions play a crucial part in our performance. Football
players are not only an analysis on paper, they are also human with lives and
struggles, which makes many analyses biassed just by not taking into consideration
that a player’s life or their state of mind might have changed during the process of an
analysis of their performance in past games. Therefore, a quantitative approach
seems to lack the need of incorporating situational factors that might be affecting a
player’s or a team’s performance.

RESPONSE TO QUESTION 4

Do you think it is appropriate for football managers to use only quantitative

information to evaluate their players’ performance during a season? No, it is not.

While it is important to consider Big Data for a more rational and logical approach to
analysis and decision making and to avoid errors and biases, it is not fully reliable as
the only source of information. It might be misinterpreted as there are always
situational factors (like the weather, injuries or personal issues) backing up the
information and providing context to give better insight into the quantitative data. It
also fails to consider qualitative aspects such as teamwork, tactics, work ethic,
leadership and communication which are essential soft skills for a good player.

For that reason a balanced approach makes much more sense. A combination of
quantitative and qualitative data is crucial to provide a more comprehensive and
accurate evaluation of a players' performance without leaving out necessary
information. Making good use of both rational and non-rational decision making
techniques will lead to more informed and fairer decisions based on the full picture.

NATALIE SCHMIDT

PATRICIA RODRÍGUEZ

NURAN EL TANAHY

IVANA RIHOVA

BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION