How do people working in football watch football? (2024)

Working professionally in football often brings with it an overload of watching matches throughout the week. Every now and then, switching off and watching for fun is necessary.

But that’s not always the case for Hesham Abozekry, who is the director of data operations at Hudl and a co-founder at StatsBomb.

A couple of years ago, a Champions League-winning team working with the data company filed a complaint because one of their goals was credited as an own goal instead of being given to their player.

Eventually, a different angle showed that the shot was going off target and only a deflection directed it in, but it’s these types of situations that keep Abozekry on his toes while watching football.

“I try not to think about work while watching for fun,” he tells The Athletic. “However, when a controversial situation happens in a big game I get concerned because it could be open to interpretation in terms of data collection. Is this a shot or a cross? An assist or just the ball deflecting off the player? How does this affect the live data?”

The reality is that working in football is often tiring, despite it being a dream job. “The amount of work that goes into getting a full-picture account of what is happening can be quite draining,” says Carlon Carpenter, head video analyst at Houston Dynamo. When watching football for entertainment, Carpenter is more relaxed and tries to enjoy the spectacle of the occasion more.

This point of view is echoed by Jamie Carragher, the former Liverpool defender and now leading pundit on Sky Sports in the UK and on CBS Sports/Paramount+ in the United States.

“I would say I’m analysing 80 per cent of the time, but sometimes I just like to watch without thinking too much,” Carragher tells The Athletic. “That’s normally the case after Monday Night Football when my head is hurting.”

On the other hand, Aurel Nazmiu, a senior data scientist at Twenty First Group — a company that provides consulting and technology services to help clubs gain a competitive edge — tells us he watches live matches with less stress due to the nature of his work.

“Generally speaking, I try to enjoy watching matches for what they are, which includes being emotional and less objective than my day-to-day job,” says Nazmiu. “It is a welcome difference in some ways.”

On any given weekend, these people need to watch certain games due to job commitments: Carpenter watches MLS matches to study future opponents and Carragher is completely across the Premier League for his role on Monday Night Football.

But for casual watching, Nazmiu has created a match recommendation model that takes in the quality of the teams playing on a weekend, how impactful the result could be on their final-season projections, the geographical distance and the historical rivalry between them to calculate a final score for each game.

“At Twenty First Group, we have a ‘Quality’, ‘Jeopardy’, ‘Connection’ framework that can allow us to quantify for fans what the best match to watch is on any given weekend,” Nazmiu tells The Athletic. “My biggest challenge as a fan is sometimes understanding which match to watch on any given weekend — this framework helps me to decide where I should spend my time.”

The number of games each person watches in a week will differ from one role to another; a first-team performance analyst doesn’t necessarily watch the same number of matches as a senior person at a data company.

Ali Elfakharany, co-founder at StatsBomb, and his colleague Abozekry average around five games a week. “I’ll watch any game I think will be interesting in any league,” says Elfakharany, but Abozekry’s data collection trips in the lower divisions have shifted his preferences.

“When you are exposed to lower-quality football all over the world due to work commitments, you appreciate the higher levels,” he says. “That’s why I focus more on watching the Premier League.”

Analysis roles at professional clubs mean watching more games to prepare for upcoming opponents. “I watch 10 to 15 matches on average, usually half of them will be work-related,” says Jimmy Enani, a first-team performance analyst intern at AFC Wimbledon.

“Doing opposition analysis along with the head of analysis at the club, Tom Daws, we will work on three to four games per opposition. Sometimes we have three games to play in seven days. Hence it can end up being required to watch five or more games in a week for work only.”

Meanwhile, Carragher watches seven to eight games a week in addition to catching up with Premier League highlights on Match of the Day, but that doesn’t take into account the amount of time he spends going back to recheck certain situations or rewatching games in full. “If I have got Monday Night Football, I will rewatch a game or two on Sunday evening,” he says.

As a head video analyst, Carpenter says he always goes back to rewatch his team’s game — usually twice. “I will have the game clipped whilst watching it live, and then the next day I’ll watch it back again to create a post-match debrief presentation for the staff,” he says. “This includes adding more team-specific phases that were important, as well as doing individual development work by creating clip packages for players.”

Despite the differences, there’s a general consensus among those spoken to for this article. If they are watching for analytical purposes, they don’t dual-screen when there are two games being played at the same time; they prefer to watch the match alone, and without any surrounding noise.

The last bit isn’t really a choice for those working from the stadium. “During a game when I’m working, I always have noise-cancelling headphones in, so I can speak to the staff on the bench, and that muffling effect really helps,” says Carpenter.

Before watching any game, some preparations are made to help with insight. An analyst at the stadium will need to set up his laptop to be able to sync up event and tracking data with his video feed right at kick-off. If it’s not his team, he may use a tactical board while watching at home. Another data-oriented person may check playing trends and areas where teams excel in or out of possession on his company’s data analytics platform.

The most interesting aspect of how different people working in football watch is how they look for different elements, depending on their roles.

“I focus on what we can improve as a team or keep on doing positively. We can also stress the importance of doing things which are creating a ton of value for us as a team,” says Carpenter. “At half-time, I’ll try to provide some of the key clips to the staff before the manager will speak to the players.”

Away from matchday analysis, Enani studies other teams to expand his library with different ideas from a variety of coaches. “If I am watching a match for Roberto De Zerbi, I will be focusing more on short goal kicks, the build-up in general and how the opposition is dealing with that,” says the Wimbledon analyst.

“On the other hand, if I am watching Thomas Frank’s Brentford I might focus more on the out-of-possession phase and set pieces.”

For Carragher, it starts with the systems of both teams, and then what their ideas are in and out of possession. “If any players are taking up strange positions that you wouldn’t expect — that has obviously come from the manager — I try to work out why,” he says.

Rupesh Popat, who has coached across England and Germany, and more recently worked as a scout in the Championship, explains that in addition to figuring out which phases a team is having particular difficulties in and reflecting on how they could solve the problems they are facing, he understands the roles and responsibilities of the individual players in the system.

“It’s important to evaluate a player’s performance while taking into account what the coach is asking of them,” Popat tells The Athletic. “Then it’s about evaluating their suitability for what the team is looking for and assessing them in relation to this criteria.”

Making notes and taking timestamps of the minutes they want to go back to is common. Notes will usually be short and written when the ball is out of play or during a replay. However, it’s different when you are analysing at the stadium.

“When I’m working, my notes will largely come in the form of clipping video and sending that to the coaches,” says Carpenter. “I might add in an annotation or two for later reference, but it’s usually talked out with them as they watch the clip too.”

From another perspective, Abozekry is thinking about the quality of the data that will be collected. “I take notes about ambiguous situations that could affect our data collection process,” he says. “Also, situations that could be useful in terms of training the data collectors.”

It’s not all for work purposes though. Nazmiu wants to improve his football skills for his regular seven-a-side matches.

“I play football twice a week and often operate in the No 6 position. Sergio Busquets was a player I used to enjoy watching closely. Now, it’s Rodri,” says the data scientist. “So, typically I enjoy watching how the holding player is scanning and making decisions.”

Focusing on the individual actions of players is one way of learning. Fans can get more out of watching a game in different ways and for different purposes, whether to progress their career or enrich their knowledge.

“A fun thing to do is try to focus on something specific for one game and watch it really closely. It can be an individual or a certain aspect of how a team is going about the game — when do they look to press? What triggers do they use? How do their wide players and full-backs interact in possession?” says Carpenter.

“If you do this for something new every week, you’ll get a greater appreciation for all the various aspects that make up the game, and will also be able to become a more educated viewer.”

Elfakharany suggests the way forward for fans is to lessen the knee-jerk judgements and ask more questions about the decisions made by players and coaches.

“I also think just really thinking about fatigue and physicality as a core function of performance, and how decisions change when players are tired would make fans much more appreciative of how good the level of football is today,” he adds.

No one falls in love with football because of expected goals (xG) models and analysing corner kicks, but learning newer aspects of the game adds to the enjoyment.

How to watch football? There’s more than one way.

(Header photo: Rich Linley — CameraSport via Getty Images)