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Football's resistance to change

Leading football analyst Chris Anderson comments, 'Nine years since I started looking at football data. seven years since we started work on The Numbers Game [well worth reading]. Six years since we published it. Lots has changed, but much less than I would have predicted, given the obvious opportunities to gain an edge.

'Plenty of exciting things happening in the space. Yet, football's resistance to change and its urge to solve problems with money rather than brains one of the untold stories of sports analytics. It's a story of power, fear, myopia, misaligned incentives, and male pathologies.'

My take would be that football is a very conservative 'industry'. Flood it with lots of money and people tend to do more of the same, although one would have to acknowledge that big steps have been made in the standards of stadiums. However, more fundamental changes take time, as is evidenced by the case of women's football.

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