In most football teams, the minutes before the match are spent in the locker room, where the coach provides lastminute tips and delivers a motivational speech to the players.

However, Manchester City Football Club follows a different ritual: The players spend 15 minutes before each match with its performance analyst team,65 discussing what they had done well or wrong in previous matches. For instance,

the defense examines several factors: the number of crosses,

effective or ineffective tackles, balls lost or recovered, the relationship with midfield, and maneuvers to protect their penalty area.

The day after the match, the analysis team, led by Gavin Fleig, Head of Performance Analysis at Manchester City Football Club, gives each player a detailed and personalized report of all their moves during the match, giving each player accurate feedback on the improvements required. In a 2012 interview with Forbes,66 Fleig said that the goal of the performance analysis unit is both to help the club makes smarter decisions by relying on objective and more informative data and to enhance players’ performance by helping them to become more reflective and aware of their unique features, actions, and moves on the pitch.

To illustrate how the performance analysis team helps improve performance, take Manchester City’s performance and the set-piece goals scored in the 2010–2011 season. According to the analyst team, Manchester City was underperforming more than any other club in Premier League, with only one setpiece goal scored over 21 matches. More than 500 corner kicks were studied by the analyst team to understand what lead to the goal. The players were then presented with videos illustrating the best tactics and moves applied by other teams. This helped Manchester City to score 9 goals in the first 15 matches of the next season from corners, which represents a tremendous improvement in their performance.

Data analysis is a critical decision-making support tool for Manchester City’s managers at all levels, including the youth teams. For example, future young players can learn their role and characteristics within the different formation plays and what aspects they need to focus on to develop their talent. Big data is thus a means to achieve Manchester City’s strategic goals in youth team development, which is to integrate young, homegrown talents into the first team’s formation.

Since the performance analysts started helping the team, Manchester City has gotten the best defensive records for two consecutive years since 2012, and it won the title in the 2011–2012 and 2013–2014 seasons after more than four decades of no wins. Of course, big data is not the only factor behind these successes, but it was very important.

To continue being a leader in football big data, in 2016,

Manchester City organized a global hackathon, with more than 400 applications received from all over the world,67 during which data and football experts created algorithms and simulations using data from real players that had never before been made available to external actors. The challenge was to create algorithms that could help identify new moves,

passes, running, and pressure to be more affective. The winning team, who received a cash prize of £7000 and the promise to collaborate with the performance analysis team,

created a learning machine algorithm that tracks decisionmaking during games.

Discussion Questions 1. What types of decisions are made by football managers?

Would you characterize these decisions as structured or unstructured problems? Explain.

2. Describe how football managers can use big data to make better decisions, referring to rationality, bounded rationality,

intuition, and evidence-based management.

3. What type(s) of conditions are more likely to influence the performance analyst team’s work: certainty, uncertainty, or risks?

Explain.

4. Do you think it is appropriate for football managers to use only quantitative information to evaluate their players’ performance during a season? Why or why not?

5. How can big data transform football decisions in the future?