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Comment by wgyn | Hacker News Reader

At the end of the article, Football Manager (an extremely souped-up version of FIFA's manager mode) is briefly mentioned as having influenced data analysts and scouting. I wish they had dug into it more. The connection between video games and scouting seems more direct than the one to on-field play (until we get really good VR).

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FM actually has a very very extensive player database and a large number of scouts who provide them with data. There are reports of popular clubs who use the FM database (and additional statistical analysis) to find out about players and so on. A slight tangent, there are teams like FC Midtjylland(Danish League) and Brentford(English second tier) who make extensive use of data (think Moneyball) to sign players, and have achieved moderate success.

Midtjylland and Brentford (i.e. Smartodds) disbanded their football analytics department.

I remember reading on r/soccer that some real life transfers have happened in football partially motivated by scouting done in FM.

It is incredibly difficult to move the field of football analytics forward, especially inside clubs, where despite the implication in the article it is decidedly rare. I've got no objections to the FM database as a possible template for scout reports, but it has nothing to do with analytics, and when people _say_ it does, and then somehow it doesn't work because you bought Ibrahima Bakayoko, it sets the field back even further.

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