The Ingenious Evolution of Football Data

The use of Football data didn’t start with the Premier League in 1992, when OPTA started collecting numbers or when Moneyball caused waves in 2003. It’s always been there and has been used for far longer than most people realise. In recent years football metrics have gone mainstream. Now here, for the first time, are the collected tales of how football data has grown and evolved over more than 100 years to the point where it controls almost every aspect of the modern game.

The path has been a difficult one, and along the way you will meet geographers, analysts, accountants, computer geniuses, cartographers and more. People thinking so far outside the box they were shunned and ridiculed. But these are the stories of the men and women who forged ahead with obscure, unexpected and seemingly impossible ideas that became the building blocks of 21st century analysis.

Through the decades and across national boundaries these stories criss-cross the globe and take us towards a universal understanding of the game.

With first-hand input from some of the most important names in soccer analysis and recollections from managers and coaches who pioneered the work alongside hitherto unseen archival materials, this complete exploration of the data game has been assembled.

If you want to understand how we reached this point and how football is now played, coached and analysed, then read on.