Their stories are packed with their own intrigue<\/a>, but neither has Liverpool\u2019s media profile. The Anfield club\u2019s rise back to the pinnacle of the English game \u2014 capped by winning a first title since 1990 in 2020 \u2014 was a scenario that was comparable to Henry\u2019s previous impact in American sport.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/GettyImages-467838077-scaled.jpg\")
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\n Salah\u2019s displays at Chelsea did not suggest a player destined for superstardom (Shaun Botterill\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you look at what caused analytics to take off in baseball, it was actually only once the big teams started to combine that level of intelligence with money,\u201d said Luke Bornn, the co-founder of Zelus Analytics (now Teamworks Intelligence), and who has worked with multiple European clubs, including Toulouse, AZ and AC Milan.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the early days, it was the Oakland Athletics winning way above their payroll \u2014 which is impressive, but they didn\u2019t win the championship. It was only when the (Boston) Red Sox, the (New York) Yankees and the (Los Angeles) Dodgers started to combine deep pockets with intelligence that it became a lethal combination.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s an analogy with football here. Liverpool were not the first team to use data, but going in with Ian Graham and Michael Edwards at the highest level, I think that\u2019s really what raised the attention.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHow many articles were written about AZ in the Netherlands over the last decade? Very few. How many are written about Liverpool\u2019s analytics? Hundreds, and Salah took that to the forefront.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bornn was working as a professor at Harvard University when he answered Roma\u2019s call to be their head of analytics in 2015. Salah was playing at Fiorentina at the time, but even the most basic statistical model revealed that the Egypt international\u2019s profile was worth investing in.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis data was so overwhelmingly strong that it was pretty clear that the \u20ac15 million option (to buy) was an absolute no-brainer,\u201d Bornn says. \u201cIt was just a case of looking at this guy\u2019s ability to progress the ball. Early analytics work quantified how players who move the ball towards the opposition\u2019s goal are extremely valuable \u2014 and Salah did that in spades, both creating for himself and others.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two productive seasons at Roma were all it took before Salah returned to the Premier League, after that unsuccessful stint at Chelsea that yielded just two goals in 19 appearances.<\/p>\n
Salah was Liverpool\u2019s chosen man, but knowing that Brandt was an alternative option provides a parallel universe of what could have been. It is an example that highlights another crucial role of analytics within clubs: steering a manager away from players, as well as towards them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were definitely a lot of signings that didn\u2019t happen because we differed from the narrative of the scouts,\u201d says Rudd, the co-founder of analytics company \u2018src ftbl\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t always like this, but we\u2019re really good at identifying the good players across the industry now. What\u2019s a lot harder is finding the right player for the team at the right moment, at the right price.<\/p>\n
\u201cUsing data and analytics can help answer those questions a lot more. But we can also say this is not the right player for us. He might be wonderful for another team, but what we need this player to do is very different from how he\u2019s operating. I think we can better quantify those risks going from one environment to another.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bornn agrees with the sentiment.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy biggest contribution is the things that didn\u2019t actually happen,\u201d he says. \u201cThere\u2019s an alternative world here where a bunch of other transactions were made instead of these ones. Often, the value of analytics is the things that you don\u2019t see \u2014 it\u2019s stopping the really poor decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Salah will always be the icon of Liverpool\u2019s success, but the arrivals of Roberto Firmino, Sadio Mane, Georginio Wijnaldum, Andrew Robertson, Fabinho, and Diogo Jota are further examples of their fruitful data-led recruitment strategy over the last decade.<\/p>\n
Eyebrows were occasionally raised by rival clubs at the time, but Liverpool\u2019s unwavering trust in their process was crucial to the advantages they have benefited from in the long-term. It is no coincidence that their shrewdest signings came at a time when Graham\u2019s research team were at their most prominent.<\/p>\n
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\n Salah\u2019s star began to rise at Roma (Filippo Monteforte\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
\u201cUsing data consistently is really hard, because you\u2019re consistently overriding your human intuition,\u201d Bornn says. \u201cData tends to agree with the human eye about 80 per cent of the time, but when you\u2019re truly driving decisions with data, it\u2019s that 20 per cent \u2014 when there\u2019s a real disconnect with what you see with your eyes \u2014 where you get the benefits.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not wired to acknowledge our flaws or biases, and override them by using these statistical models. If you really want to make a difference, it\u2019s how you act when the data doesn\u2019t match your eye \u2014 that\u2019s when you get really interesting conversations and potentially a real competitive advantage.\u201d<\/p>\n
Today, nearly every Premier League club has some form of dedicated data department<\/a>. While the value of analytics within recruitment is well-established, surprisingly few clubs are using it to its full potential.<\/p>\n\u201cAfter the original Moneyball book (published in 2003), you had the movie (released in 2011), which started to take this story into the public consciousness,\u201d Bornn says. \u201cThen later, once Liverpool started to get media attention, that really caused teams to say, \u2018We have to do this too\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhether the subsequent teams have used data correctly or not is another question. I think there\u2019s a bunch of factors at play, but I would say that (Liverpool\u2019s approach) was a big step change.\u201d<\/p>\n
The support that FSG has given to Liverpool\u2019s research and data science team has been crucial in their recruitment success, but having such deeply-rooted support from those at the top of the club is not always the case.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would say the number of clubs still doing this work in the optimal way is quite small,\u201d Rudd says. \u201cWhat we often see is a lot of involvement and a lot of good departments, but they don\u2019t have that organisational structure to really maximise the impact with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the very least, most clubs know that data can provide you with the tools to make smart recruitment decisions, but there is no guarantee that a player will succeed once they walk through the door.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Salah\u2019s impact was immediate, with Liverpool unlikely to make a more influential signing for a very long time. <\/p>\n
The process to find him was relatively simple: smart minds, a data-led approach and the bravery to ignore the outside noise. Other clubs have been searching for their own version ever since.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mohamed Salah\u2019s extraordinary Liverpool career is drawing to an end. Since arriving at the club in the summer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":682411,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[307367,64,63,5579,596,1613,1614,13198,85,3276],"class_list":["post-682410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-associazione-sportiva-roma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-egypt","tag-football","tag-liverpool","tag-premier-league","tag-soccer","tag-sports","tag-sports-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=682410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/682411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=682410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=682410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=682410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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