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 in The Middle East last week meeting with a club's recruitment team. Separately.
First, I sat down with the Chief Scout. We talked about their process, their tools, their workflow.
“I've got my systems”, he said “The scouts know what they’re doing. We file our reports, we track our targets. It works great, and there’s no need to change anything right now.”
Later that day, I met with the Sporting Director and posed the same set of questions.
He leaned back in his chair. "Honestly? I'm frustrated. I have no visibility into what's actually happening. Every time the board asks me a question, I have to wait on other people for answers. That's a problem.”
Same club. Two completely different realities.
Here's what struck me: both of them, good people, strong professionals with the best of intentions, authentically thought they were doing their jobs well. The Chief Scout was filing reports, tracking players, doing the work. The Sporting Director was making decisions, managing budgets, dealing with the board.
But they weren't actually working together. They were working in parallel.
The Chief Scout had his tools: a rudimentary “scouting app”, a basic database, an AI chatbot with cheap generic data. From his perspective, the system functioned.
The Sporting Director had questions “the system” couldn't answer, and needed contexts that were simply absent. Friction was everywhere!
The information existed. It just wasn't accessible. And nobody was talking about it.
This isn't a Middle East problem. I see it everywhere. People doing good work that decision-makers can't see. Sporting Directors making decisions without complete information. Everyone frustrated. Nobody saying it out loud.
Nobody wants to admit their system doesn’t actually serve the club's needs. The Sporting Director doesn't want to undermine the Chief Scout by saying he can't see what's happening. Neither wants to deal with budget proposals, leaving vendors they’ve known for years, or learning new tools. So they both keep going, working harder but not more effectively.
Meanwhile, opportunities slip through the cracks. The Sporting Director doesn't know about a player the scouts flagged three months ago who just became available. The scouts don't know the Sporting Director already decided against a player type they're still tracking. Everyone's working. Nothing's aligned.
When I talk about visibility, I don't mean the Sporting Director micromanaging every scout report. I mean being able to answer basic questions instantly, plan, and manage key processes:
The clubs that win aren't the ones with the most scouts or the biggest budgets. They're the ones where the key stakeholders are looking at the same information, having aligned conversations, and making decisions together.
They're the ones where “it works great” from one person’s perspective actually means that for everyone.
