Focus on the Pitch, Not the Code: Why Building Custom Softwares Costs Football Clubs More Than Money.
Football clubs exist for one fundamental purpose: excellence on the pitch. Everything else—marketing, merchandise, facilities management—serves this core mission. When it comes to technological innovation, particularly around roster management, the same principle applies. The question isn't whether AI-powered applications can transform player trading and the squad planning process—they absolutely can—but how clubs should acquire this capability.
From the beginning, our position has always been clear: Buy. Don't build.
The Hidden Costs of Building Custom Software
The allure of custom-built software is understandable. In theory, a custom solution tailored to your club's unique wants and needs sounds ideal. But this approach conceals major drawbacks that can ultimately undermine the competitive advantage all clubs seek.
First, consider the timeline. Developing robust AI applications for complex squad planning processes isn't a matter of weeks or months—it's often a multi-year endeavor. During this development period, competitors who opted for off-the-shelf, ready-made solutions gain valuable insights and make decisions with all available information while your custom project remains incomplete.
Second, the financial investment extends far beyond initial development. A custom solution requires continuous maintenance, updates, debugging and adaptation to evolving standards. These all require specialized talent commanding premium compensation in today's market. Not to mention having a headcount of data scientists, engineers and analysts, software developers, database architects and ML engineers—all salaries that could and should be filled by football researchers. What might begin as a €500,000 project can balloon into millions over a relatively short lifespan.
Third, and perhaps most critically, building custom software diverts team focus. Every hour sporting directors and analysts spend in software development meetings is an hour not spent on player evaluation, tactical analysis or competition research—the core responsibilities directly impacting club performance.
The Plug & Play Software Advantage
At Gemini, we’re biased, of course. Building tools to help football clubs become smarter, faster and more efficient with squad planning is all we do—and, immodest as it sounds, we’re the best in the world at it. We believe modern, off-the-shelf AI solutions for football operations offer five main compelling advantages over custom development:
First, buying off-the-shelf solutions give you immediate implementation. Professional solutions can be deployed and generating actionable insights within days or weeks rather than months or years. This rapid deployment translates to immediate competitive advantages in the transfer market and tactical preparation. At Gemini, we know that you don’t want Black Boxes north the exact same workflows as your contemporaries. That's why everything is modular and built for you during onboarding. Your KPIs, your nomenclature, your game model, your needs met.
Second, you get proven reliability. Established software has undergone rigorous testing across multiple environments and use cases, eliminating the "teething problems" inevitable with new custom developments. When critical transfer decisions hang in the balance, reliability isn't merely convenient—it's essential.
Third, these solutions give you continuous improvement without any added cost. Professional software providers constantly refine their algorithms and features based on feedback from numerous clients, effectively distributing development costs across the entire customer base rather than burdening a single club.
Fourth, is specialized expertise. Companies dedicated exclusively to squad planning software attract elite talent in both sports domains and artificial intelligence—specialized experts whose combined knowledge typically exceeds what any single club could assemble internally.
And finally, there’s complete security and compliance. Professional providers invest heavily in security and regulatory compliance, areas often receiving insufficient attention in custom projects until problems arise.
The Resource Allocation Question
Every football club operates with finite resources—and this doesn’t just mean financial capital, but also management attention, technical staff hours and team focus. How these resources are allocated determines competitive outcomes both immediately and long-term.
Consider a thought experiment: if your club suddenly received an additional €2 million in budget, would you spend it on software development or on acquiring promising young talent? For most clubs, the answer is obvious. Yet many unwittingly make the opposite choice by embarking on lengthy custom development projects that drain resources from their core mission.
This represents the fundamental paradox of building custom software: clubs pursuing this path often do so hoping to gain competitive advantage in player acquisition and development, yet the actual act of building diverts resources away from these same objectives.
The Expertise Mismatch
Football clubs excel at identifying, developing and deploying athletic talent within competitive environments. Software companies excel at creating reliable, secure and innovative tech solutions. When clubs attempt to become software developers, they operate at an inherent disadvantage against organizations whose entire purpose centers on technical excellence.
This expertise mismatch explains why so many custom software projects in sports ultimately
disappoint. The same club management that can brilliantly evaluate a promising midfielder
might lack the specialized knowledge to properly scope a machine learning project or evaluate
cloud architecture decisions.
Collaboration Instead of Creation
The most successful clubs recognize strategic partnerships multiply capabilities more effectively than attempting to develop every capacity internally. Just as clubs form relationships with specialized medical facilities rather than building hospital wings, the optimal approach to
advanced squad planning operations involves partnering with dedicated software providers.
This collaborative model allows each organization to operate within its domain of excellence.
Of course each club and it's support staff should utilize in-house reports, dashboards, and unique metrics. Those get integrated seamlessly into Gemini's core tech.
Your club retains the football expertise. Your tech partner provides the technical implementation and ongoing support. The result is superior to what either could achieve alone.
Competitive Focus in a Crowded Landscape
Football leagues become increasingly competitive each season. Marginal advantages compound over time, ultimately determining which clubs will achieve their sporting and financial objectives. In this high-stakes environment, maintaining organizational focus becomes paramount. Every distraction from core competencies represents not just wasted resources but opportunity costs competitors will eagerly exploit.
Ultimately, Clubs Should Choose Performance Over Process
The case for buying rather than building squad planning software ultimately comes down to a simple principle: choosing performance over process. What matters isn't owning a unique software development process. It's getting the performance advantages superior software provides.
The clubs that will thrive in tomorrow's football landscape will be the ones maintaining relentless focus on their sporting mission while strategically leveraging specialized partners for tech capabilities. They understand in football, as in business, victory doesn't always go to those who build everything themselves, but to those who most effectively deploy all available resources toward their primary objective: winning.
Your club exists to excel at football. Let us help you do that by providing the technological foundation to support your winning vision—without the distractions, delays and hidden costs of custom development.
