Manchester United Data Director Sansoni hails ‘meaningful progress’
Written by
Ian Westbrook
July 30, 2025
Manchester United Director of Data Michael Sansoni says the club has made “meaningful progress” in the past few months.
Sansoni, who was appointed in April to replace Dominic Jordan for his first job in football, said on LinkedIn that the signings of Matheus Cunha and Bryan Mbeumo and “new methodologies starting to take shape” reflected some of their early work.
He added: “I’ve inherited a brilliant team: smart, committed, and hungry to make a difference and together we’re building a world-class data and AI function to power decision-making across football and the wider club.
“The challenge is great, but so is the opportunity. We’re only just getting started and I’ll be growing the team in the months ahead.
“It’s an honour to be here.”
United said Sansoni “has been tasked with establishing Manchester United as a data-led organisation”.
Sansoni moved sports from Formula 1 after working for 11 years at Mercedes. The self-confessed F1 fan was their Senior Performance Simulation Engineer (Trackside) during eight World Championships.
His United predecessor Jordan had to create United’s data department more or less from scratch, having been tasked with “driving forward the club’s use of data to help players and staff deliver success on the pitch” when appointed in March 2022.
He built the club’s first analytics department, bringing in Head of Data Operations Chris Shumba, Machine Learning Scientist Andrew Davies, Decision Scientist Alex Kleyn and Data Scientist Max Adema.
‘Evolving the club’s workforce’
United have also named Kirstin Furber as the club’s People Director.
The club says she will “take the lead in developing and evolving the club’s workforce and people culture”.
Furber’s appointment comes after a second successive summer of redundancies at Old Trafford, affecting 200 people this year and 250 last year. Several long-serving staff left at the end of June.
Earlier on Wednesday, we reported that Michael Farrell had been appointed as United’s first Head of Football Culture and Development and that Dan Ransom had become Head of Psychology and Performance Lifestyle.
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