Investing in performance technology can often require compromise. Whilst not every club is blessed with the riches of the sporting elite, conflict can occur across departments where budgets are limited. With performance technology, it is important to understand the wider strategic impact and how, when used effectively, the right technologies can provide a significant and meaningful return on investment.

In this series, we review the key areas that can benefit from the effective applied use of performance technology to maximize the return on investment and ensure efficient application across the club infrastructure.

Check out the other parts of the Maximizing the Impact of Performance Technology Series here.

Recruitment & Talent Identification

Converting Team Identity into action means designing and implementing high performance recruitment processes. This requires you to build an efficient workflow for squad planning, recruitment briefs and player investment reviews, and is a fundamental trigger when it comes to the club’s profitability, sustainability and safeguarding compliance with the regulations.

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By combining video and data, those in football management can understand performance gaps and build strategic sustainable plans to maximize returns on investment. Hudl Pro Suite tools support recruitment practitioners in the identification, monitoring and recommendation process, also empowering scouting departments to brief key decision-makers and use evidence-based processes in their squad planning.

Squad Planning

An always-on process used to guide the overall review of the retain, release, sell, loan, promote, and buy strategy of the club: who is coming out of contract, who you want to sell and refill per position across youth and senior teams?

This process starts by referencing the Game Model to understand where the squad requires improvement and leveraging multi-disciplinary information to get the insights you need. Clubs can evaluate how many academy players they want to develop for the first team and how many players they want to develop as an asset to sell/trade with other clubs. Then, they need to assess the current status of the players. Is he/she ready for a loan and how much would their value increase after playing in another competition? Combining tactical, technical, physical, psychological and social evaluations to understand where the players are in their development process. This process is critical to identify areas of improvement and leads to the Recruitment Brief.

Wyscout Shadow Teams allows you to quickly assess all the players at your club, labeling them and instantly accessing their video and data.

Recruitment Brief

By using performance analysis tools, teams can track and compare players’ performance data to make informed decisions in selection and squad planning, while also quantifying and defining the demand for each position and role. During this phase, the recruitment decision-makers should make clear the characteristics needed per role and capture this into a position-specific recruitment brief that covers the tactical, technical, physical, psychological and social KPIs, also adding clarity on available budget and estimated game time in the seasons ahead.

When it comes to talent identification, Wyscout is the essential tool, including 600,000 players analyzed, 1,800 new matches available every week, and over 600 competitions covered worldwide. Furthermore, the Wyscout Scouting Area combines scouting reports, curated video clips, as well as performance and career data to provide a 360-degree view of targets to prove evidence on potential signings.

What we’re trying to do is to combine two types of analysis. On one side, the objective data, and on the other side, the subjective analysis of video. We’re trying to work with both tools, trying to achieve perfection, that would be the subjective analysis to fully match the objective analysis. Ramon Rodriguez Verdejo “Monchi” - Sporting Director, Sevilla FC

Read the full interview with Ramon Rodriguez Verdejo “Monchi” - Sporting Director at Sevilla FC, here.

Player Investment Review

This is the best practice to summarize all the information in one place and to combine different sources of data to make informed decisions. Performance data, financial information, medicals and recruitment insights are conveyed in a unique system that should inform football management about the associated acquisition risks (see example in the image below).

This is a high-level analysis that helps decision-makers determine the signing strategy and is the foundation for a solid conversation at an executive level. At this stage, sustainability and future tactics must be proved by a deep analysis of multiple data sources. Wyscout API provides performance, recruitment and career information needed through a standard format that ensures complete compatibility with other digital platforms needed to build your team’s business intelligence tools.

Example of recruitment brief

As stated by Stefano Malvestio - Sports Attorney at Law at Bichara & Motta Advogados

"Signing the wrong player may have, for a club, not only obvious negative sporting and financial repercussions but also legal consequences. In fact, the deciding bodies of FIFA and the CAS have already determined that “inadequate sporting performance” is not a legitimate reason to cease paying due salaries, impose a fine, or premature termination of an employment contract.

In the absence of strict contractual language, the same is valid for clubs’ obligations under transfer and agency agreements. In other words, this means that it is not possible for a club that has signed a player, with which it is not satisfied, to try to avoid its obligations by referring to his poor quality.

Possible consequences include, besides the possible sporting or disciplinary sanctions established by the FIFA Regulations in case of the club’s failure to comply with its obligations, annual default interest, which the CAS has found to be acceptable up to a rate of 17% p.a., as well as, on a case-by-case basis, a penalty amount of the amount overdue.

With similar considerations in mind, it is therefore imperative that clubs do their due diligence before signing a player, making the best use of all available tools, including those of a technological nature."

Hudl Pro Services help teams implement intelligence-based systems that inform everyday decision-making, learn more here.

The Hudl Pro Suite is an integrated solution that gives clubs all the technology they need to succeed in the modern game, learn more here.

Wyscout offers a complete set of scouting products designed to enhance every aspect of player recruitment, start your free trial here.