Last week at World Football Summit Riyadh, we had the privilege of bringing together a distinguished panel of thought leaders in football to explore one of the game’s most pressing challenges: how clubs can successfully implement and maximise the value of data.
The challenges clubs face with data adoption are well known across global football, so hearing an Owner, a CEO, and a CTO share how they use data, not just as a support tool, but as a strategic driver across their organisations, was both refreshing and inspiring for the audience in the room.
Data Across the Entire Player Journey
Merijn Zeeman, CEO at AZ Alkmaar, spoke about the role data plays throughout the complete player lifecycle at AZ. The club are renowned across Europe for their consistent ability to find talent, provide a top-class development environment and to maximise their returns in the transfer market. Merijn outlined how from identifying talent using Teamworks Intelligence, to building data-informed individual development plans, the Dutch club is using data to maximise the value of their playing assets at every stage of the journey. The focus is clear: data is most powerful when it connects recruitment, development, and performance into one continuous process.
Creating Control in a Chaotic Game
Ben Harburg, Owner of Harburg Group (Cádiz CF and Al Kholood), highlighted how essential data is in bringing structure and control to a sport defined by unpredictability. In his words, football will always involve chaos and randomness especially when the margins are so small with games being decided by one goal, or one refereeing decision -but putting the right systems in place, especially when it comes to player recruitment, allows leaders to make more informed decisions and sleep a little easier at night. Data, in this sense, becomes a foundation for confidence and clarity and is baked into all key-decision making by leadership at Ben’s clubs.
At the recent TGG Big Data Webinar, Gareth Jennings, Sporting Director at the Harburg Group , shared how the group views data not simply as a tool, but as a culture and a behaviour.
He explained how Teamworks helps create a fully connected environment across all clubs in the group, using Teamworks Hub for centralised communication and operations, Teamworks AMS for performance, medical, and athlete data, and Teamworks Intelligence for recruitment and game model integration.
TGG Big Data Webinar – Gareth Jennings – Building a Data-Driven Culture (Short)
Building Foundations for Innovation
Mo Dabbah, CTO at Como 1907, addressed a challenge familiar to many clubs: transient staff and the need to rebuild processes season after season. At Como, the focus has been on laying strong data foundations built around their “Data Lake Como”. These foundations enable rapid innovation and create a sustainable competitive advantage, even as personnel change.
An Engaged and Insightful Audience
The session was made even more impactful by an engaged audience of Saudi Pro League (SPL) CEOs and senior football executives from across Europe, who posed thoughtful and challenging questions throughout. Their involvement underlined just how central data has become to modern football strategy at the highest levels.
A brilliant discussion, with practical insights and real-world examples of how clubs are moving from data aspiration to data execution.
If you’d like to learn more about how Teamworks Intelligence is supporting these three football clubs, as well as others across Europe and the Middle East, get in contact with us.