Kick-start Segmentation Guide for Football Clubs
Reading time:
9 mins
As Head of Business Development at Goalimpact, Patrick operates at the intersection of analytics and decision-making in football.
With a PhD in Chemistry and a background in strategic sales, he bridges the gap between data and real-world adoption inside clubs.
In this micro-interview, he challenges common assumptions about player evaluation — and explains why turning numbers into decisions takes more than just dashboards.
Data is not the same as information.
It needs to be interpreted and analyzed — and even then, it only offers descriptive or context-specific insights.
It might tell you how a player plays, but not necessarily how good that player is.
That’s a crucial distinction.
In a highly emotional and fast-paced environment like football, data must be easy to read — but still maintain high quality, meaning predictive value.
If not, you get lost in a jungle of metrics, and the data ends up being ignored.
The real challenge is combining both: simplicity and value.
Data and decision-makers need to actually talk to each other. Without that conversation, data stays isolated and never becomes part of the decision-making process.
The shift needs to be from “data or scouting” to “data can filter, scouting can deepen.”
It’s not either-or. It works best when both sides are connected.
Patrick’s point that “data is not the same as information” is more than a semantic nuance. It cuts to the heart of why so many CRM or analytics projects stall inside football clubs. Numbers alone don’t move an organization forward but people do.
For data to shape real decisions, it has to be simplified without losing its predictive edge, and embedded into workflows where decision-makers already operate. That’s why I push every club I work with to connect data and humans early: involve coaches, scouts, and commercial staff in building the system, not just in using it afterwards.
Because at the end of the day, data that isn’t trusted or acted on is just another dashboard collecting dust.
