Sublime

‘workmanlike’ players were selected instead of ‘stars’ and the appeal of the ‘David Beckham’ narrative (the instinctive belief that good-looking players are somehow better) was rejected.

experience

What football had not witnessed, Anderson and Sally felt, was an analytics revolution. Plenty of people were reading the numbers and taking note of what they said: these are the players who have sprinted the most, these are the number of shots we have taken and the rest. But nobody – as far as they could tell, at least – was trying to find out what