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 tech, Venture Capital investors are very sensitive to what they call “entry point”. If they invest in a business at a $5M valuation and the business sells for $100M, their return-on-investment is twice as large as if they’d put money in at a $10M valuation.

Player trading isn’t all that different.

Winners understand the greatest opportunities lie not in outbidding everyone for the obvious targets, but in correctly identifying and pricing assets others have overlooked or undervalued. This requires a contrarian mindset and the process rigor to back it up.

I've seen clubs identify players whose underlying metrics suggested future star potential while their current market values reflected past struggles or positional misunderstanding. These organizations don't just spot talent — they spot mispriced talent. They understand in a market increasingly driven by narrative and reputation, cold truth is your competitive edge.

At the risk of being captain obvious, nailing pricing matters. A lot.

If you’re only looking for 5% long-term returns, invest in Apple stock. If you want big outcomes that allow you to make even bigger moves, invest in a startup. Same with footballers.

Many organizations fall short here: they confuse player value with player price. Value is what a player contributes to your on-field and commercial product. Price is what you pay to acquire that value.

Winning organizations obsess over this distinction.

They account for positional scarcity, tactical fit, age curves, and who might buy the player from them in a few years. More importantly, they have the discipline to walk away when the price exceeds their calculated value — no matter how badly they want the player or how much pressure they face from fans, media or ownership.

I've witnessed clubs pass on marquee signings that may have generated headlines but destroyed their wage structure — instead allocating those resources across multiple targets to ultimately deliver greater value.

That's not just smart business. That's championship thinking.