Tottenham land Man City’s Satikova as data drive continues
Written by
Simon Austin
December 24, 2024
Tottenham have hired Sasha Satikova from Manchester City as they continue to build up their data science capabilities.
Satikova had worked for City since April 2021 as their Senior Data Scientist. Prior to this she was a Data Scientist for multi-national IT services and management consultancy firm Accenture and a Management Information (MI) Analyst for British Gas.
Spurs have made development of data science a key priority since Johan Lange arrived as their Technical Director in November 2023. Lange’s fellow Dane Frederik Leth heads up their Football Insights department as Head of Insights and Strategy.
The job of this unit is to provide data-derived insights that can impact decision-making across all departments, from First Team to Academy and including both men’s and women’s teams.
The overall mission is “ensuring that critical processes, from player recruitment to performance optimisation, are consistently informed by thorough, high-quality information.”
Tottenham advertised the Lead Data Scientist role on TGG in May and the job had three main components:
- To lead the development and refinement of advanced statistical models and machine learning techniques, creating innovative metrics and insights that enhance the analysis of player and team performance.
- To lead research initiatives that explore new methodologies in football analytics, continuously pushing the boundaries of data science to provide the club with cutting-edge insights.
- To foster strong collaborative relationships with Data Engineers and other key technical roles within the department to ensure seamless integration and operationalisation of analytics models, driving the adoption of best practices in data science across the club.
Last week we reported that Tottenham had hired Pawel Kapuscinski from Zelus Analytics as their new Data Engineer.
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