Kick-start Segmentation Guide for Football Clubs
Reading time:
9 mins
Armand Bertea spent nearly two decades building digital products across industries before turning his focus to football.
Today, he's the founder of The Football Brain and co-owner of FBIN (Football Business Inside). His mission: help clubs make structured, informed decisions — especially in academy settings, where intuition still outweighs data.
In this interview, Armand shares:
There are many areas where football clubs could significantly improve their decision-making through better use of data and digital tools.
One key area we aim to impact is talent identification within a club’s academy.
By enabling academy coaches and staff to input data in a structured way, sync that data, and build relevant player profiles, we help ensure more accurate and informed decisions about a youth player’s current level and future potential.
The most important thing I’ve learned is that the context within football clubs changes rapidly — and you need to stay agile to keep up.
I’ve also realized that people working in football want the same things from technology as anyone else: to save time, be more productive, and achieve better results.
Being data-informed means having access to the right data at the right time.
Too often, we see organizations — not just football clubs — collecting large amounts of data, but that alone isn’t enough. Data only becomes valuable when you can extract relevant insights from it.
For example, many clubs regularly evaluate their youth players and track their development. However, this data often isn’t considered when deciding whether to offer a player a professional contract.
More often, that decision comes down to the “gut feeling” of a coach or academy director. While their opinion is important, it should be supported by relevant data to ensure a more objective and informed outcome.
Armand’s point hit me hard: clubs track plenty of youth player data, but when it comes to big decisions, like offering a pro contract, it often gets ignored in favour of a coach’s intuition. Of course, experience and gut feel matter, but without structured data, you risk bias and blind spots. What I take from this: being “data-driven” isn’t about hoarding numbers, it’s about having the right data at the right time to support better judgment. That lesson applies beyond academies. In CRM and fan engagement too, timing and context are what turn raw data into commercial impact.
