Jake's Road Report is Gemini Sports founder Jake Schuster’s weekly update from professional football's frontlines. He travels globally, meeting club executives to share candid insights on AI's role in football. These raw, actionable thoughts are delivered weekly, with meeting details kept confidential and specific intel omitted.

—-

I was recently at a conference in Germany with one of our senior engineers, and we were remarking about how clear it is that, despite AI being inescapably everywhere, no one has any clue what it actually is. Everyone is freaked out about AI. Everything (supposedly) is AI this and AI that. But no one is actually talking about the value it brings—or how and why to even use it.

Everyone says they're using it. People try ChatGPT but haven't used it at work. Some have used “AI” before, but at most it's been a basic ML model from three years ago. I'm not here to bash anyone. But I do want us all to take a step back and realize: you don't need to solve the universe here. You don't need to play 5D chess with AI.

What you honestly should be using AI for? Saving yourself from reading 20 scouting reports.

You don't need to go from 0 to 100. Just do something. If you do nothing else, do these two things:

First, find a way to look things up faster. Stop waiting hours for someone to pull up info that should take seconds. Ask your system questions and get instant answers. "What did our scouts say about this player's work rate?" Done. Three seconds.

Second, summarize massive amounts of information and query your own database. You have years of scouting reports, match analysis, and player assessments sitting in files nobody can efficiently access. AI can synthesize that institutional knowledge instantly. "Show me all the left-wingers our scouts have evaluated in the past six months who fit our pressing system and are under 23." That's not science fiction. That's Tuesday before breakfast.

If you do nothing else but those two things, you'll be in a great place. That's your starting point.

This technology exists right now. It's not theoretical. It's not five years away. Clubs are using it today to make faster, smarter decisions while their competitors are still scheduling meetings to discuss whether they should explore AI.

The AI revolution everyone's talking about? It doesn't start with replacing humans or building sentient systems. It starts with helping smart people work smarter. It’s so much less complicated than we all make it. 

Just cut through the noise… and begin.