FOOTBALL PROGRESSION PATH Helping you create opportunities in football Hey Reader, A couple of senior roles in recruitment and scouting have come up recently. Multiple clubs, across the top levels of football. Good locations. Interesting projects. Part of me wanted to apply for every single one of them. I didn’t. But I thought about it longer than I should have. This happens to me more often than I’d like to admit. And if you’re someone who wants to work in football, I’d bet it happens to you...
10 days ago • 3 min read
FOOTBALL PROGRESSION PATH Helping you create opportunities in football Hey Reader, I’ve been listening to a lot of the Founders Podcast recently and Episode 413 - How to run down a dream is a must listen. The host studied three people from completely different worlds - a basketball coach, a folk singer, and a restaurateur. On paper, nothing in common. But the same five themes kept appearing in each story. These are the exact same patterns I followed on my own journey into football - and the...
17 days ago • 2 min read
FOOTBALL PROGRESSION PATH Helping you create opportunities in football Hey Reader, I hate to say this. But the odds of you sharing your football work online, posting consistently for two months, then giving up - they're extremely high. It's not your fault. It's just how humans are built. Building your online portfolio comes with delayed rewards, unpredictable outcomes, high effort, fear of judgement, and no clear finish line. No job offers after 50 posts. Your best work gets 10 likes. Each...
24 days ago • 2 min read
FOOTBALL PROGRESSION PATH Helping you create opportunities in football Hey Reader, I'm currently taking a course on context engineering with Twelve Football. They've built AI analysts that clubs actually use. Not dashboards. Not ChatGPT wrappers. Structured AI that can explain what football data means in plain language. And the concept at the centre of it all? Something they call a wordalization. Here's what that means. A data visualisation takes raw numbers and turns them into something...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
FOOTBALL PROGRESSION PATH Helping you create opportunities in football Hey Reader, Something I've been thinking about recently is how much perception matters when you're trying to break into football - and how easy it is to damage it without realising. It's not something that comes up all the time. But when it does, the impact is real. And it's worth being aware of before it becomes a problem. Football is a small industry Depending on the country, there are only so many professional clubs....
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
FOOTBALL PROGRESSION PATH Helping you create opportunities in football Hey Reader, I've been thinking a lot recently about what actually has an impact for people who want to break into football. The stuff that actually works. Because when you look at the people who land opportunities - whether that's a conversation with a director of football, a freelance gig, or a full-time role - they don't all come from the same background. They don't all have the same qualifications or connections. But...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
FOOTBALL PROGRESSION PATH Helping you create opportunities in football Hey Reader, Three people can watch the same footballer and walk away with completely different conclusions. Not because one is wrong. But because each is looking through a different lens. This is something that trips up a lot of people trying to break into football. They assume "player analysis" is one thing. One process. One skillset. It isn't. The role you're working in shapes the way you view players. And understanding...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
FOOTBALL PROGRESSION PATH Helping you create opportunities in football Hey Reader, AI just changed who wins in football careers. And it's not who you think. This week I started playing with OpenClaw (Clawdbot), check it out if you haven't already. It's mind blowing. It's also a week where I had a conversation with David Sumpter, who is professor and has co-founded an AI analytics company in Twelve. We were discussing how AI is changing the landscape for who is going to be successful in...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
FOOTBALL PROGRESSION PATH Helping you create opportunities in football Hey Reader, There used to be one way into football recruitment and analysis. University degree in sports science or data analytics. Internship at a professional club. Junior analyst position. Work your way up. If you didn't have the right degree, you couldn't get the internship. If you couldn't afford to work unpaid for six months, you couldn't get in. If you weren't already connected to someone inside a club, you stayed...
2 months ago • 3 min read