11 Questions with Daniel Katona

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 Daniel Katona:

How did your first opportunity in football come about?

At the moment football analytics is just a hobby for me. I just started getting into it a few months ago. Although as a video editor specialized in football montages and promos I have had some great opportunities in the past. Football has always been a vital part of my life. As a kid, I was just a big fan, I even played football for 2 or 3 years, but unfortunately for different reasons I had to quit when I was 14 or 15. That’s when I started making football montage videos which I still do for fun/ work when I have enough free time. Creating football videos required high networking skills as I always wanted the players to see my videos. 

And to be honest after a little while I had become quite good at it, and in the end, I ended up having professional football players like Cesc Fabregas, John Terry or Petr Cech in my whatsapp and twitter direct messages. In terms of the analytical side of things, I’m only just getting started and to be honest I still have a lot to learn to be able to call myself a football/data analyst.

What attracted you to data/analytics? What’s more intriguing now names?

Currently I study Business Information Technology at my uni, where the main subjects include statistics, programming and business intelligence/analytics. Few months ago I read a book

called The Expected Goals Philosophy by James Tippett and shortly after that another book called Football Hackers by Christoph Biermann which two books really caught my eye and

inspired me to get more involved in the analytics side things. I’ve always found coding a bit boring and hard, so I wasn’t motivated enough to do homeworks on my own. But since I’ve

found free sources of football data everything has changed and I’m more open to learn new languages and softwares than ever before.

Which data metric has been the most profound to you? What caught your eye?

I’m a big fan of the xG model, and even tough the current brand of Expected Goals analysis is by no means perfect and we can still greatly improve the quality of Expected Goals data, it can be used in many ways to evaluate team and player performance. One of my favourites is the Expected Points metric which is already quite a useful tool to measure teams performances.

What is biggest misconception in data? How do you combat/counter this?

This is a bit hard to answer for someone who’s quite new in the field of analytics. But if I have to choose something, I think many people don’t know that before you start working with data

(especially if there are more than one data sources), as an analyst, first you have to clean and format the data, which can be quite frustrating and time consuming. Also one of the biggest misconceptions regarding data and data-driven decision making is basing your decisions simply on data, and believing what data tells you. Which is not quite right. For example in player recruitment, even tough the model can identify possible hidden gems and undervalued key players, you should also make sure that the data wasn’t lying, by video watching videos and replays of a player’s performances.

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

Probably I should have started focusing on the tactical aspects of the game sooner. Besides data analytics and video editing, lately I’ve become obsessed with football tactics as well. When I have time I really enjoy reading articles on the likes of Statsbomb, Spielverlagerung or BetweenThePosts etc.. I soon realized I’ve started watching games from a completely different point of view. Focusing more on the tactical sides of games. Few years ago it would sound crazy, but now sometimes I prefer a brilliantly accomplished build-up sequence from goal kick to a long distance

goal, because I know it was worked out on the training ground and wasn’t just by luck or individual quality.

Do you see player development or player recruitment as more important? Why?

Difficult to say which one is more important. Probably depends on the profile of each club. As I see, player development is becoming more important amongst England’s biggest teams since the FFP rules appeared. Chelsea and Man United are good examples and the fact that this current Chelsea squad is rated the fifth-most valuable squad in Europe’s major leagues, according to a new study made by CIES Football Observatory, tells you player development can be very profitable. 

On the hand there are good examples of successful player recruitments as well from recent years. You could mention Brentford’s or Liverpool’s recruitment. FC Midtjylland is another great example from the past decade. Real Madrid and their young brasilians. So I think every club should decide which one is more important than the other, if you are small team with a low budget and can’t afford to buy data off data suppliers then you should probably focus on developing players, but if you can afford to use data to find hidden gems and undervalued players you should probably use it to your own

advantage.

What is your favorite sports moment? Why?

As a Chelsea supporter, it must the Champions League final in 2012. They didn’t just win it, but the way they did it, the road, the courage they showed, was absolutely remarkable. I was quite young at the time, but it was one of the great sports stories ever. I can only compare it to Leicester winning the Premier League. As a neutral or an aspiring football and data analyst I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed that Champions League run that much, but as a young Chelsea supporter, it was one of the best moments of my life.

What coach/player/team inspires you? Why?

Many of them. For different reasons. My favourite coach is probably Jürgen Klopp right now. His teams are so versatile and for this reason very hard to play against, and also they always seem to find a way to break through teams thanks to their versatility in attack. I enjoy both his skill-sets and his passion on the sidelines. But I admire the teams of many coaches.. I really like Lucien Favre, his Dortmund side is one of the teams I most enjoyed this season, and also he’s done brilliantly at both Nice and Borussia Mönchengladbach before. Apart from Favre and Klopp, probably Guardiola, Nagelsmann and Marco Rose are my favourite coaches. I try to keep up with their games as much as possible so I can take notes of their games and learn things from them. One day, maybe I would like to challenge myself as a football coach, whether it means coaching children or coaching professionals it wouldn’t really matter, until I can be around a football pitch, I’m happy.

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

Of course my studies did help me to get into analytics, but I think with the help of the internet and the free data provided, anyone can easily get into data/analytics. I think you also need a basic understanding of the game, so I would also recommend reading sites such as Spielverlagerung and Statsbomb. But for those who want to learn, everything is given. I’m still learning the basics to be fair. I learned how to use Tableau during my studies, but I’m currently learning R to be able to process other type of data as well in the future. You can find great tutorials on the net.

Who is your favorite athlete of all time? Why?

Frank Lampard. He was the one who made me become a Chelsea supporter back in 2005. Now he’s the head coach of Chelsea Football Club. Time flies. I think he was probably the most complete midfielder I’ve ever watched. And also, he is a quite intelligent person. People tend to forget he was only a prime Ronaldinho away from the Ballon d'Or. Apart from him, probably Petr Cech. Fantastic athlete. He’s done a lot for me during my video editing days, and I will always be grateful for that.

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

My video editing past certainly helped. I had to use Photoshop a lot which is always useful to design things. Also my love for football made a difference, I probably wouldn’t have gotten into analytics if it wasn’t for football and football data. And finally, as I’ve mentioned before I basically study data/analytics at my university which makes everything easier, but it’s still early days for me, and I’m eager to learn a lot more about analytics in the coming months. Learning R will be another big next step on the way!