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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Five years ago, if you had AI-powered squad & player analysis, you had an edge. Today? Every club in the top three divisions of European football has access to essentially the same tools, the same data feeds, the same scouting systems.
So what happens when AI becomes table stakes?
I was outside London last year meeting with a Sporting Director who said something that stuck with me: “We just signed up for our third so-called ‘AI’ platform this year. We've got more insights than we know what to do with. But we're still making the same mistakes.”
This is the ultimate paradox of the AI era in football: The technology is democratizing. And the competitive advantage is shifting.
AI Doesn't Win Transfers—Speed Does
Here's what I'm seeing: Two clubs analyze the same player using similar data models. One thought they could solve their problem by throwing money at it, purchasing a highly touted service from a former analytics director from a Premier League-winning team charging roughly the price of a mid-sized house. The other was focused on efficiency. They each get similar insights about his underlying metrics, tactical fit and market value. Both drew similar conclusions.
One club needs three days to align their scouts, analysts and Sporting Director. The other club makes a decision in three hours.
The second club signs the player. The first club adds him to a list of “the ones that got away.”
The AI didn't make the difference. Speed did.
Speed isn't about rushing decisions—it's about eliminating friction. When your scouts, analysts, and executives are all working from the right information in real-time, decisions that used to take days take hours. When your Sporting Director can access everything from their phone, the time between insight and action collapses.
The best AI in the world can't fix a culture where data people and football people operate in silos. Where insights get ignored because they weren't presented in the right format or came from the "wrong" department. Where ego matters more than evidence.
The clubs that will dominate the next decade aren't the ones with the fanciest algorithms.
They're the ones where AI-generated insights flow seamlessly into football conversations, where technical staff and coaching staff collaborate instead of compete, and where “the data says” and “the eye test says” are treated as complementary and contextual not contradictory.
To me, what it comes down to is this: Organizational alignment is the new moat.
When efficiency is prioritized the advantage goes to clubs where everyone works from the same single source of truth, not competing versions of reality.
This isn't sexy or revolutionary. It's the boring infrastructure that lets brilliant people do brilliant work.
AI is simply the price of entry. Speed, culture and alignment are the true competitive edge.
Somewhere, right now, two clubs are analyzing the same player with the same algorithms. One will sign him in 48 hours. The other will still be scheduling meetings.
The AI didn't make the difference.
