Two forward-thinking Finnish football clubs have signed up to TransferLab, a powerful online football data scouting tool developed in the UK and used by clubs and player agencies across 11 different countries, to support their pursuit of success at domestic and continental level.

HJK and SJK: embracing the use of data in recruitment

Helsingin Jalkapalloklubi (HJK) have long been a powerhouse within Finnish football; their 2020 top-flight title campaign in the Veikkausliiga, led by Head Coach Toni Koskela, was the 30th in their history. HJK are the only Finnish club to have participated in the group stage of the UEFA Champions league, back in 1998, and are looking to return to that level of competition soon.

Miika Takkula, Sports Director at HJK, is seeking to improve all aspects of the club’s football operations in pursuit of further European success in the future, and commented: “We’re very excited to begin incorporating TransferLab into our recruitment processes. I like to think at two levels about the benefits TransferLab will bring us. Firstly, for the players we may have found through other channels, we can gain independent, unbiased and detailed assessments of their current and projected future performance levels. Secondly, we can search for players in leagues and countries that we would have otherwise not been able to investigate, and potentially find talent that we would have otherwise missed.”

Seinäjoen Jalkapallokerho (SJK) have risen from the Finnish third division to the top flight since their formation in 2007 as part of a merger between two clubs located in Seinäjoki, a town renowned for its entrepreneurial spirit. SJK won their first top flight Veikkausliiga title in 2015 but have not reached the same heights in recent years.

Richie Dorman, Sporting Director at SJK, is planning to take them back to the top of the league, and commented: “Having access to cutting-edge analytics improves the likelihood of us getting the edge on rival clubs in player recruitment: we are able to identify undervalued players more accurately and more quickly from the key markets we analyse.”

The success of these two teams and their desire to innovate to attract new talent comes during a period of high optimism within Finnish football. Last year, the national team qualified for Euro 2020, reaching their first major tournament in the country’s history.

Advanced data-scouting becoming more accessible

TransferLab is a cutting-edge software solution, developed in the UK in a unique collaboration between specialist football data consultancy Analytics FC and financial and business analysts LCP, which helps football clubs improve and simplify recruitment decisions. TransferLab is currently being used by clubs and player agencies in 11 countries, including by 5 English Premier League clubs. The tool gives recruitment personnel unparalleled access to detailed performance metrics on up to 90,000 players across 80 different leagues worldwide.

“It’s great to have both HJK and SJK on board and using TransferLab.” said Jeremy Steele, Analytics FC’s founder and Managing Director. “Advanced data-scouting is now available not only to clubs with the funds and motivation to hire teams of data scientists, as we’ve made advanced analytics genuinely accessible to clubs without their own internal data staff and infrastructure”.

Bart Huby, Partner and Head of Football Analytics at LCP, commented: “Data is becoming a new and powerful currency and having knowledge of key player performance stats from across the world will make a big difference to the success of football teams across different leagues and countries. TransferLab gives clubs the ability to search for players, compare and rate them on entirely bespoke sets of attributes which match the type of player a club is searching for, and gain predictions of potential future performance levels.”

“It’s fantastic to see that more clubs are waking up to how this data can give them the edge over their competition and help them spot potential before the rest.”

For more information about TransferLab, you can visit the website here.  Here, you will find a launch video for TransferLab 2.0, released in April 2020, which gives an overview of all the key features and functions