11 Questions with Lukas

The pursuit of wisdom in any walk of life quickly reveals that what you think you know is not nearly enough to get you to where you want to go. As I'm starting out in my football scouting journey I challenged myself to reach out to those already working in various roles in football to answer a short list of questions. My goal wasn't to get answers but relevant perspectives on the game within the game.

Here is Lukas, of miasanrot.com

How did your first opportunity in football come about?

I was publishing stats & articles on twitter :)

What attracted you to scouting/analytics? What’s more intriguing now names or numbers?

I've always been very interested in football. That in combination with the amount of free available data basically started my work with football data.

Who/what is the first player/concept you "found"? What caught your eye?

I started mainly with different ELO algorithms and the predictions of future results. 

If you could start over what skill would you build on first?

Perfect start for me has been learning R (Python would work as well). After that it was quite easy to do first analyses. Knowledge about specific models and so on can come later.

Do you see player development as more of an art or a science? Is development on the club or the player? Why?

It is a science. But the human component is still tricky to fully cover, thus it might often appear as an art. Development is on the player. The club can only facilitate.

What is your favorite sports moment? Why?

Bayern Munich winning the CL in 2013. The previous years have been heartbreaking, esp. the final against Chelsea. Winning it the year after was amazing. Other moments: 4:0 against Barcelona the same year. 5:1 against Wolfsburg with Lewandowski going crazy. Winning 4:2 against Juventus Turin in 2016.

What coach/player/team inspires you? Why?

Pep Guardiola for obvious reasons. Joshua Kimmich for being that "hungry" and leading at his young age. SC Freiburg for basically everything they do.

What advice would you give to someone wanting to get into media/analytics?

For analytics: start to familiarize yourself with a statistical programming language like R or Python. From there to advanced analytics its only a small step.

What is your favorite app/tool to use (for work or fun)?

R

What other sport/hobby/discipline do you feel improves your work as an analyst? Why?

For sport analytics its crucial to look at other sports. especially sports like NFL/NBA/NHL. In terms of sport analytics (technical side as well as  they are way ahead and you can learn a lot.