Chelsea make critical new appointment in board room to lead data science development | OneFootball

Chelsea have reportedly made what has been described as a ‘critical hire’ in their boardroom this month as they look to develop data science.

As we know, the new owners who have come in at the club have been super ambitious and have certainly not been afraid to put their hands in their pockets.

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Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali and those around them, have come in and changed the club from the top to the bottom. Not only have they rebuilt the squad entirely, and not just once, they have also made big changes across a number of the departments at the club and in the board room.

And now they have made a new appointment within the data department, something that they are really in belief of.

Gupta starts at Chelsea

Gupta to lead data science

According to The Training Ground Guru, Sachin Gupta has been appointed as Chelsea’s first Chief Analytics Officer and will lead development of their data science capabilities.

The 42-year-old officially started work with the Premier League side at the start of this month, although he been working remotely from the United States so far, he will apparently move to the UK shortly.

The report says that since buying Chelsea in May 2022, Boehly and Eghbali have made their commitment to data science very clear.

Speaking in October 2022, Eghbali said: “We’ve looked at it and we think European sports is probably 20 years behind US sports in terms of sophistication on the commercial side, sophistication on the data side.

“I had one super high-level Sporting Director at (one of) the world’s top three clubs tell me, when I asked about their approach to data, ‘The data’s my eyes, I pick players on my eyes.’

“He has six scouts, no data. We know of good sports teams in any league here (the United States), there’s 10, 20, 30 data analysts and wide use of data. That’s one area we think there’s a lot of runway for European sports.”

And this is why they describe it as a critical hire at the club.