Every layer of a modern recruitment operation — the data provider, the model, the shortlist, the recommendation — inherits the blind spots of the layer below it. A metric that structurally miscounts what happened on the pitch produces a model that systematically misprices players. The model produces a shortlist that excludes candidates the data never saw.
The industry-standard metric for aerial ability — the "aerial duel" — records a contest only when both players leave the ground. Situations where a player wins the ball without jumping, where positioning resolves the contest before contact, where the ball is claimed unchallenged because the opponent declined to compete — none of these register in the data.
Read the full research →These gaps are structural — embedded in the measurement conventions the field takes for granted. They cannot be detected from inside the system that produced them.
One acquisition informed by a single unexamined metric costs eight figures. Independent intelligence that would have caught it costs a fraction of one per cent of the transfer fee.
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