Premier League clubs to use Football Manager data to recruit players
For all of those who have won a Premier League title in their pants or coached a national team from their bedroom on computer game Football Manager, those social life-sapping achievements could soon be all worth it in the real world, after it was revealed that Premier League clubs will use data from the game to recruit new players.
Sports Interactive, the game's manufacturers, have reached an agreement with top performance analysis firm Prozone Sports to provide data to their Recruiter software, which is used by leading clubs around the world to identify talent.
Football Manager's database contains players' biographical, contractual and positional information gathered by thousands of scouts spread across the globe, and this information will feed into Recruiter's detailed analysis software, which allows clubs to determine a player's value and suitability to specific leagues or teams.
Miles Jacobsen, studio director at Sports Interactive and one of the men behind the original Football Manager game, said that "for years we've heard stories of real-life managers and scouts using our data to help with the recruitment process.
"From now on, it's official…real managers around the world will be finding and comparing players using data and a search system that will be very familiar to players of Football Manager.
"The information gathered by our network of more than 1,300 scouts around the world, combined with Prozone's amazing performance data, makes this an invaluable tool for any football club that takes player recruitment seriously."
According to The Times, who were granted access to the elite software by Prozone, Recruiter contains video footage of every game played in the world's top 35 leagues, covering 250,00 players who can then be analysed by 400 separate criteria.
Football Manager sold access to their database to Everton in 2008, when David Moyes, a known believer in the benefits of statistical analysis in football, was manager. Moyes' studious poring over the data helped Everton to unearth hidden talents in the game for cheap fees such as Seamus Coleman, that continually helped the Merseyside club finish in the top half of the Premier League and compete with the best sides. It's an approach that has been continued by new manager Roberto Martinez, and has been adopted throughout English football.
In an anecdote published by Wired, Harry Redknapp is said to have turned to then Saints' performance analyst Simon Wilson after a defeat and said "I'll tell you what, next week, why don't we get your computer to play against their computer and see who wins?"
Now Wilson is head of strategic performance at Manchester City, champions of a league in which teams are using data provided by a computer game to get ahead. Perhaps the joke is on Harry after all.