This is the belief system beneath every paper, programme and framework the Observatory produces. If you disagree with these, you will disagree with all of it — and we would rather you knew that now.
Performance, medicine, coaching, recruitment, psychology, leadership, technology and culture are not departments. They are one system that has been organised into departments for administrative convenience — and football pays for that convenience every week.
The constraint is no longer collection. It is interpretation, translation, and the courage to act on what the evidence actually says rather than what it was hoped to say.
The same number means different things in October and April, at 19 and at 33, after a flight and after a rest week. A metric without context is not neutral. It is misleading.
The purpose of a football technology is to make a human being better at a decision they were already responsible for. Any system that removes the human from the loop has removed the accountability with them.
Decision quality is a separate discipline from data quality. Football has invested heavily in one and almost nothing in the other.
The body communicates continuously and in advance. The question is whether the organisation is structured to hear it — and whether anyone is empowered to act on a signal that is inconvenient.
Trust, clarity, psychological safety and the ability to carry bad news upwards are measurable performance variables. They are also the ones most likely to be described as 'soft' by organisations that have never measured them.
The clubs that will lead the next decade are not the ones with the most tools. They are the ones with the strongest habit of asking better questions, and the humility to be wrong in public, quickly.
If the intelligence era makes the game colder, narrower, or more anxious for the people inside it, then it has failed — regardless of what it did to the results.
It will be built by people who understand the game, understand the science, understand the technology, and understand each other. Building those people is the work of this Observatory.
Christopher Roselli / Personal perspective
The next opportunity is to make clubs more relevant to supporters’ lives.
By Christopher Roselli
Former Professional Footballer | Digital Innovation & Strategy | Commercial Transformation
5-minute read
At World Football Summit in Madrid, one subject kept returning to the conversation: fan engagement.
Whether the discussion began with artificial intelligence, commercial growth, women’s football or digital transformation, it often arrived at the same question. How do we build more meaningful relationships with supporters?
The persistence of that question tells me something. We have made considerable progress in reaching people. I am less convinced we have made the same progress in becoming relevant to their lives.
Football already has the passion. The opportunity is to understand what people want that relationship to become.
I spent 15 years playing professional football across the United States, Brazil and Europe, followed by 20 years working across digital innovation, brand development, communication and commercial strategy.
On the pitch, the connection between a club and its supporters is unmistakable. Away from it, I have spent much of my career thinking about how organisations earn a meaningful place in people’s lives.
Football has an extraordinary starting point. Supporting a club can become part of someone’s identity long before they buy a ticket or download an app. It connects generations, friendships and communities. It gives people shared memories and something to look forward to.
That relationship deserves more careful attention than a conventional marketing plan can give it.
A supporter downloads the app, watches a video, opens an email or buys a shirt. Each action matters. Each can tell us something useful.
But a click cannot, on its own, tell us whether someone feels understood. A growing follower count cannot explain whether trust is deepening. A transaction cannot describe the full value of belonging.
The danger comes when those measures become the definition of engagement, rather than evidence about one part of it.
Clubs need commercial results. They also need to understand the relationship that makes those results possible. Supporters can feel the difference between an organisation that listens and one that simply becomes more efficient at asking for their attention.
Much of the industry’s effort goes into bringing supporters closer to the club: onto its platforms, into its content and towards its commercial partners.
I believe we should also ask how the club can become more relevant within the supporter’s world.
That world might include a family watching together, friends maintaining a tradition, a young player finding confidence through the game or an overseas supporter whose connection has never depended on entering the stadium.
Their needs are different. Their circumstances change. Their relationship with football extends well beyond the fixture list.
Understanding those differences is strategic work. It requires curiosity about people, a willingness to listen and the discipline to resist treating every supporter as the same commercial opportunity.
A supporter’s connection to a club does not end at the final whistle. That gives clubs a reason to think more broadly about the value they can contribute throughout the year.
This is not an argument for daily messages or constant participation. Sometimes the most respectful decision is to leave people alone.
Year-round relevance means understanding when a connection is welcome, what makes it worthwhile and how people want to participate. It means creating experiences that supporters would choose because they matter to them.
Technology can help. It can make communication more useful, improve access and support better decisions. Its value depends on the purpose it serves and the trust with which it is used.
The starting point remains the person. What matters to them? What would make their relationship with the club more rewarding? What should the club stop doing?
Those questions deserve to be answered before another platform is commissioned.
The opportunity calls for leadership across the organisation. Commercial, communications, digital and supporter-facing teams need a shared view of the relationship they are trying to strengthen.
Success should include commercial performance, alongside evidence that supporters find the relationship useful, worthwhile and worthy of their trust. The relevant measures will depend on the club and the people it serves.
One question sits at the centre of my thinking:
If your club could meaningfully engage just 1% more of its supporters, continuously throughout the year, what would that mean for your organisation?
That is a question to investigate, not a demonstrated uplift or a promise of results.
I am selectively engaging with leadership across men’s and women’s professional football to explore that opportunity through my personal executive advisory practice, separate from FootballIntelligence.IO’s independent research.
If it is a conversation your leadership team is ready to have, request a 30-minute Executive Discovery.
Football has earned a remarkable place in people’s lives. The next task is to understand how to honour it.