In April, legendary Sevilla Sporting Director Monchi said “Big Data is the future of football”.

“More than scouts, we have started looking for engineers, mathematicians, physicists and experts in statistics or algorithms,” the Spaniard explained.

Data science is THE growth area in football, yet it is one of the least understood. That’s what we will try to rectify at this event, by finding out what top Premier League and international teams are doing in this area, direct from the experts who are doing it.

Clubs are able to collect a huge amounts of data in the fields of recruitment, performance, tactical and technical, but how do you turn it into meaningful insights?

How do you engage coaches so that this data can make an impact on training and matches?

We will explore these issues, as well as discussing the technology, computer modelling and artificial intelligence that can help data scientist and coaches to do it.

This event will be of interest if you are a data scientist or analyst; a coach, medic or performance practitioner eager to find out more about Big Data and how it can enhance what you do; or if you’re working in another sport or even in a different profession.

Because data science is going to have a bigger impact on all of our lives as time goes on.

This one-day event is being held at Emirates Old Trafford Cricket Ground on Friday November 22nd from 930am to 6pm. There will be a buffet lunch and refreshments. Below are details of our top line-up of speakers.

Again, we are lucky to have a top roster of speakers for this TGG event:

Paul Balsom (Head of Sports Science and Performance Analysis, Leicester City)

One of the most experienced practitioners in European football. Paul has worked for Leicester for eight years, including when they won the Premier League in 2015/16. He is also Performance Manager for the Sweden national team and Head of Performance Innovation for Belgian side Leuven. Paul has a particular interest in how data science can drive performance.

Luke Benstead (Head of Performance Analysis and Innovation, Belgium)

Luke has worked for the Royal Belgium Football Association since the 2018 World Cup, when they reached the semi-final. Prior to this he was a first-team analyst with Manchester United and Everton. He works closely with national men's manager Roberto Martinez and also oversees analysis for all national teams.

Mladen Sormaz (Head of Football Analytics, Leicester City)

Appointed to this new role at Leicester City in April, tasked with providing “data driven insights into performance, recruitment, sports science and medical.” Mladen was previously first team data analyst at Huddersfield.

Mikhail Zhilkin (Data Scientist, Arsenal)

A graduate of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, who joined Arsenal last July. Mikhail helped launch two of the most successful Candy Crush games when he worked for King.com before moving into football.

Alex Thomas (Data Scientist, Football Association)

Alex started his football ​career as a performance analyst at Swansea City in 2013. He progressed to data scientist, managing player data and developing bespoke computer science solutions. For the last two years, he has been a data scientist at the Football Association, working across the national teams.

Bikash Deb (Data analyst, Football Association)

Worked for Leicester Tigers rugby and Southampton FC before joining the Football Association this summer.