for recruitment in Toulouse, the data is given
As since its acquisition, two years ago, by an American fund, Toulouse continues this summer as a “smart” recruiter, relying largely on statistical data; a method reinforced by the rise of the club in Ligue 1 thanks to players hitherto unknown.
When he landed in the Pink City in the summer of 2020, Branco van den Boomen came out of several seasons in the anonymity of the Dutch second division after failing to win at Ajax, his training club.
“The TFC entered the player profile it was looking for into the computer. And my name came out on the list,” explained the 27-year-old midfielder ingenuously.
The Haut-Garonne club, relegated to the second division at the end of a nightmarish season, became bought by the American investment fund RedBird Capital Partners, which presided over the presidency of Damien Comolli.
The 49-year-old French leader, who worked for English clubs Arsenal, Tottenham and Liverpool in various positions, has long been fond of data and statistics.
Widely used in the sports world in the United States, “data” is at the heart of the recruitment strategy of the TFC, whose Stadium offices have taken on the air of start-ups for two years.
“We work with companies that provide us with data, such as Opta or StatBomb, and afterwards, we have statisticians, our own software, our own algorithms, which allow us in all the decisions we make in the management of the club. “, explains Damien Comolli.
About sixty different championships have been combed through by the data manager, Julien Demeaux, and his team, in order to unearth, at a lower cost, nuggets that are sometimes undervalued on the market.
– Do not neglect “the human” –
Van den Boomen, named the best player in Ligue 2 last season, with 20 assists (a record) and 12 goals, is the most emblematic success of the method. But he is not the only one.
Coming straight from Milton Keynes, in the English third division, British striker Rhys Healey was crowned top scorer in L2 (20 goals) at the end of the last exercise.
The “Téfécé” also pulled out of its statistical hat the Dutch midfielders Stijn Spierings and Belgian Brecht Dejaegere, who also played an essential role in the rise of the club in the elite.
Enough to reinforce the leaders in their recruitment policy, pursued since the opening of the summer market with players drawn from the Netherlands (Moroccan attackers Zakaria Aboukhlal and Dutch Thijs Dallinga) and Scandinavia (Norwegian goalkeeper Kjetil Haug and defender Swedish Oliver Zanden).
Coach Philippe Montanier finds himself at the head of a strange assembly of fifteen different nationalities exchanged in both French and English.
The group has however shown last season, helping results, a beautiful cohesion between foreigners and young people, the “pitchounes”. Because according to the strong man of the Toulouse locker room, data is not everything.
“The president relies on many other things, especially the human,” said Montanier at the end of June when he resumed training. “We saw that the quality of the team was not only technical, but also in terms of the state of mind”.
“Our data helps us, but there is the competence of the teams behind it. It is a project based on people,” he insisted.
Data can also be an interesting source of profit. Bought for a pittance (350,000 euros) from De Graafschap, Van den Boomen is now listed at 6 million on the transfer market. B(r)anco!