5 Questions with SMukherjee

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 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 a conversation with SMukherjee:


What is your first memory of football?

My 1st memory is going to local football matches with friends and listening in radio (It was 1980s in India) about big matches (Mohun Bagan vs East Bengal) from Kolkata league.

My 1 st memory of international football was Italia 90. It was really exciting to watch the big names I had only heard about till then. Became Cameroon fan for that tournament after the 1st match!

What is the biggest misconception/cliche you’ve found in this space?

I don’t even know where to begin on this. There are so many. It will almost be an article in itself.

As a data analytics lover, biggest misconception in football data is most often how it should be used vs how it is used. Lots of people hate data because for them it does not support their narratives. Also, a bunch of big names in football twitter use data just to get to get eyeballs – they use data selectively only to hype about one player or a team. It's used without context and just works like clickbait. Because these accounts have big following, these then become accepted knowledge among some fans.

Second part of this is some people’s idea that just because we love data, we don’t watch matches! Actually, it’s mostly in reverse. To analyze properly, we usually watch more than once.

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

I would build my skills up in Python or R. I don’t know coding and it holds me back currently from expanding to different other types of data visualizations.

What three (3) football icons would you want to have a meal with? Why?

Bielsa, Klopp and Wenger. The discussion would be really interesting to listen to.

What is your favorite quote or saying?

'We think we know what we are doing. We have always thought so.'
— Michael Crichton (Prey)