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.
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In my travels visiting clubs around the world, one thing has become abundantly clear: Too many remain content with clunky Tableau/R-Shiny dashboards and desktop-bound platforms. They deliver information, but package it in ways that actively work against how modern football executives (and their teams) actually operate.
While beautiful interfaces matter, the real revolution lies beyond surface-level design entirely. What we're building toward is an interfaceless, AI-powered co-pilot that eliminates the friction between insight and action.
Consider how sporting directors and scouts actually work: They're always on the move — traveling between matches, meeting agents in hotel lobbies, making critical decisions from airport lounges. They operate in a fast-paced world where opportunities emerge and disappear within hours, where a delayed response to an agent can mean losing out on a much-needed signing, where market intelligence becomes stale before traditional systems can even load.
In this environment, requiring busy execs to return to their desks, log into desktop apps and navigate through complex dashboards represents a fundamental misunderstanding of modern football operations. The question isn't whether they can access the info they need. Of course they can. It's whether they can access it instantly, act on it immediately, and move forward without friction.
This is where AI has the power to transform everything. Instead of forcing execs to adapt to rigid software interfaces, AI adapts to their natural workflows. Need to evaluate a player while watching a match? Ask your AI assistant. Want to compare market valuations during an agent call? Get instant analysis through voice commands. Need to brief your chairman on a potential signing during a car ride to the stadium? Generate a comprehensive report in seconds.
I’m not saying this exists in the form I just described. But it should. And it will soon.
The future of player trading isn't about waiting until you're seated back at your desk to make informed decisions. It's about having intelligent assistance wherever you are, in whatever format works best for your situation at that exact moment.
Does the interface matter? Absolutely — but user experience matters even more. The smartest clubs are already recognizing that competitive advantage comes not from having better information, but from removing every barrier between insight and action.
In a business where timing determines outcomes, friction is the enemy of excellence.
