Monchi’s secret for good signings: mathematicians and statisticians

Madrid, Sep 23 (EFE).- Sevilla’s sports director, Ramón Rodríguez ‘Monchi’ has a team of “mathematicians, engineers, physicists, statisticians and analysts” with which he “fine tunes” the search for players for the LaLiga football team, he told the ‘Soccerex Connected’ forum on Wednesday.

“What we want is to develop our own application that allows us to refine to the maximum, to be able to use artificial intelligence, to find the player to perform to the maximum within the system that the coach uses,” explained Monchi in a session on the analysis of data in football.

“For me the key is to know what profile the coach wants. From there, with the scouting network, find that profile and when he is in Seville, be close to him to get the most out of him,” he said.

Monchi said the use of big data “is a blessing,” but “it is not the philosopher’s stone,” since it is necessary to observe the games of the footballers that are being incorporated. “Nor can we think that the data is going to remove subjectivity in decision-making.”

Working with data can even help to evaluate the behavior of footballers on social networks and news, which helps to have “a more complete picture” of the player, said Monchi.

“I am one of those who think that by doing things wrong you are always wrong and by doing them right sometimes you are right. It is about having as much data as possible, then you decide, but at least you manage the information to make the decision with as much data as possible data,” he said. EFE

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