FILE PHOTO: Soccer Football - Premier League - Brighton & Hove Albion v Manchester City - The American Express Community Stadium, Brighton, Britain - April 25, 2024 England manager Gareth Southgate in the stands before the match Action Images via Reuters/Peter Cziborra/File Photo
The Football Association's partnership with Google Cloud is helping give Southgate key insights into his squad as he finalises his plans. "We use technology and data more around selection of players," Southgate told Reuters."Helping to inform our decisions. We obviously watch every player in every match that they play with their club.
"I don't necessarily think it's about 'Are you keen on using data or not?' because in the old days we had pen-and-paper and we were ticking these things off in boxes," Southgate said. "People do view you as an early adopter or a Luddite. You're either an evangelical or you're a caveman. And actually both of those are wrong," he told Reuters.
"It's the tacit, expert knowledge of a scout, which gets distilled down to a number. So they get a grade for each game. That gets aggregated up to a set of scores over time," he said.