Stuttgart88
05/05/2013, 11:20 AM
A football club is a collection of talent. In this bizarre industry, three-quarters of a club’s revenues might be paid to 25 young men and their agents. That means that a club’s most important decisions concern recruitment. Here too, Everton need to outsmart richer clubs. This starts with where they look for talent. Everton are doing a decent job. Outside the dining room hangs a plaque listing the players from the club’s academy who went on to represent their country. Wayne Rooney’s name leaps out. But the ensemble is impressive given that Everton compete for talent in a relatively small region with a more prestigious club: local boys who supported Everton such as McManaman, Michael Owen and Jamie Carragher all ended up choosing Liverpool’s academy instead.
Still, Everton can do better. Like many English clubs, they scout mainly in working-class neighbourhoods. Hargreaves says: “Traditionally we have core areas where we think we find players. But there’s a growing middle-class, there are more green spaces in the middle-class areas.” Has Everton operated an unintentional bias against the middle classes? “I think evidence would suggest that’s the case.”
Then there’s the issue of bringing players from academy to first team. Very few teenagers are ready for the Premier League. Some adult players therefore need several more years of schooling before they might, possibly, make the big time. Hargreaves says: “I’d argue that a Rooney or a Messi is a freak. The real gains we could have are with players who are not the outstanding talent in their age group. Ten years ago, Leon Osman was sent on loan to other clubs two or three times, and made his debut here aged nearly 22. Leon Osman has played perhaps 300 games for Everton.” Recently he made his debut for England, aged 31.
Where you recruit matters too. Some national markets are less overfished than others. Smith says: “Probably our best example of getting a player cheaply was Seamus Coleman [bought from Sligo Rovers in Ireland]. We paid £60,000 for him when he was 19, 20. There was a succession element to it: when he came, we were well covered at right-back, and he wasn’t ready to play right-back for us anyway. He went on loan to Blackpool a boy, straight out of the League of Ireland, and came back a footballer, far better prepared for the Premier League.”
Coleman recently signed a contract to stay at Goodison until 2018. Now Everton are searching Ireland for more Colemans, but they are also targeting other underfished markets such as Switzerland, Croatia and Poland. Smith and Brown can get very excited about unknown young Poles. Signing a player is always a leap into the dark. “Watching players is a very subjective thing, an inexact science,” says Smith. “There are all kinds of inputs: live player reports, extensive video analysis, speaking to people who have worked with them, and data is one of those layers. Data plays a role – not a massive role at the moment.”
One occasion when data did matter was in 2008, when Everton were trying to replace their midfielder Lee Carsley. Smith says: “We needed someone to replace things that he had been doing: possession regains, winning tackles and headers, protecting the back four.” The club’s eye fell on a 20-year-old Belgian, obscure but for his enormous hair, named Marouane Fellaini. “We’d followed him at the 2008 Olympics but he didn’t have a great tournament. Actually he got sent off quite early on,” Smith recalls. There were few match stats for Fellaini, because there was then no data available for Belgian league matches. And so Everton watched videos of him to compile their own stats, using key performance indicators that seemed relevant. “It’s GCSE maths,” admits Smith, “as opposed to PhD maths, which is perhaps what we want to be working towards. But Fellaini was one of those where everything said, ‘Yes, do it’: the data, the subjective reports, the age, the fact that he was already playing for Belgium, his size.” And so Everton gambled £15m on him – still the club’s record transfer fee. It paid off. This summer, Fellaini is expected to join a richer club for an even bigger fee.
Everton’s performance analysts want to improve their use of data. They are now picking brains inside and outside football for new insights. They are painfully aware, for instance, that nobody in their group has a maths degree. Still, football clubs may be more advanced than most corporations in using data to recruit employees. Only about one in 10 human-resources staff at FTSE 100 companies has a degree involving numbers, says Rob Symes, who made the documentary film Outside View on sports and data. Daniel Kahneman, the psychologist who won the Nobel Prize for economics, says in the film that a key to good decision-making is to let statistics “not humans make the final decision”.
Everton’s mix of stats and humans seems to work. If they avoid defeat at Anfield on Sunday, they should finish above Liverpool again. That would please fans who haven’t forgotten Liverpool’s then manager Rafael Benitez calling Everton a “small club” in 2007. Liverpool’s history, fan-base and wage bill still dwarf Everton’s.
But Moyes’s grunts don’t seem to mind. After we’ve been talking for several hours, Smith starts musing on what he likes about the club. Everton, he says, doesn’t generate weekly soap opera of players’ misbehaviour. (Here Brown, listening to his colleague’s paean, hastily reaches back to touch the wood of a cheap table.) “This is a club to be proud of,” says Smith, “from the point of view of overachieving, from the way it conducts itself, from the way the manager and players are perceived. It’s respected by other clubs and other managers and other staff.” He doesn’t mind that Everton are unfashionable. “I actually think that the old stadium, with its history, that’s part of what Everton is.” If Everton were richer, it might not be half as clever.
Still, Everton can do better. Like many English clubs, they scout mainly in working-class neighbourhoods. Hargreaves says: “Traditionally we have core areas where we think we find players. But there’s a growing middle-class, there are more green spaces in the middle-class areas.” Has Everton operated an unintentional bias against the middle classes? “I think evidence would suggest that’s the case.”
Then there’s the issue of bringing players from academy to first team. Very few teenagers are ready for the Premier League. Some adult players therefore need several more years of schooling before they might, possibly, make the big time. Hargreaves says: “I’d argue that a Rooney or a Messi is a freak. The real gains we could have are with players who are not the outstanding talent in their age group. Ten years ago, Leon Osman was sent on loan to other clubs two or three times, and made his debut here aged nearly 22. Leon Osman has played perhaps 300 games for Everton.” Recently he made his debut for England, aged 31.
Where you recruit matters too. Some national markets are less overfished than others. Smith says: “Probably our best example of getting a player cheaply was Seamus Coleman [bought from Sligo Rovers in Ireland]. We paid £60,000 for him when he was 19, 20. There was a succession element to it: when he came, we were well covered at right-back, and he wasn’t ready to play right-back for us anyway. He went on loan to Blackpool a boy, straight out of the League of Ireland, and came back a footballer, far better prepared for the Premier League.”
Coleman recently signed a contract to stay at Goodison until 2018. Now Everton are searching Ireland for more Colemans, but they are also targeting other underfished markets such as Switzerland, Croatia and Poland. Smith and Brown can get very excited about unknown young Poles. Signing a player is always a leap into the dark. “Watching players is a very subjective thing, an inexact science,” says Smith. “There are all kinds of inputs: live player reports, extensive video analysis, speaking to people who have worked with them, and data is one of those layers. Data plays a role – not a massive role at the moment.”
One occasion when data did matter was in 2008, when Everton were trying to replace their midfielder Lee Carsley. Smith says: “We needed someone to replace things that he had been doing: possession regains, winning tackles and headers, protecting the back four.” The club’s eye fell on a 20-year-old Belgian, obscure but for his enormous hair, named Marouane Fellaini. “We’d followed him at the 2008 Olympics but he didn’t have a great tournament. Actually he got sent off quite early on,” Smith recalls. There were few match stats for Fellaini, because there was then no data available for Belgian league matches. And so Everton watched videos of him to compile their own stats, using key performance indicators that seemed relevant. “It’s GCSE maths,” admits Smith, “as opposed to PhD maths, which is perhaps what we want to be working towards. But Fellaini was one of those where everything said, ‘Yes, do it’: the data, the subjective reports, the age, the fact that he was already playing for Belgium, his size.” And so Everton gambled £15m on him – still the club’s record transfer fee. It paid off. This summer, Fellaini is expected to join a richer club for an even bigger fee.
Everton’s performance analysts want to improve their use of data. They are now picking brains inside and outside football for new insights. They are painfully aware, for instance, that nobody in their group has a maths degree. Still, football clubs may be more advanced than most corporations in using data to recruit employees. Only about one in 10 human-resources staff at FTSE 100 companies has a degree involving numbers, says Rob Symes, who made the documentary film Outside View on sports and data. Daniel Kahneman, the psychologist who won the Nobel Prize for economics, says in the film that a key to good decision-making is to let statistics “not humans make the final decision”.
Everton’s mix of stats and humans seems to work. If they avoid defeat at Anfield on Sunday, they should finish above Liverpool again. That would please fans who haven’t forgotten Liverpool’s then manager Rafael Benitez calling Everton a “small club” in 2007. Liverpool’s history, fan-base and wage bill still dwarf Everton’s.
But Moyes’s grunts don’t seem to mind. After we’ve been talking for several hours, Smith starts musing on what he likes about the club. Everton, he says, doesn’t generate weekly soap opera of players’ misbehaviour. (Here Brown, listening to his colleague’s paean, hastily reaches back to touch the wood of a cheap table.) “This is a club to be proud of,” says Smith, “from the point of view of overachieving, from the way it conducts itself, from the way the manager and players are perceived. It’s respected by other clubs and other managers and other staff.” He doesn’t mind that Everton are unfashionable. “I actually think that the old stadium, with its history, that’s part of what Everton is.” If Everton were richer, it might not be half as clever.