Football's Smartest People Are Doing the Wrong Job

At Pelly, we listen closely to the people inside clubs who make things work - often without much fanfare. People who aren’t on stage at conferences. People building the connective tissue that most clubs rely on - but barely notice until it breaks.

Recently, we spoke to someone who’s done just that. Not once - but across multiple teams within the same football group.

They weren’t hired to build infrastructure. They were hired to support recruitment. But when the tools didn’t exist, they built them - because someone had to.

A scouting platform. A reporting app. A full pipeline of data ingestion and integration - created because what was already out there didn’t fit the club’s way of working. What started as a workaround became the operational backbone.

The problem? It didn’t stop there.

They’ve had to build similar systems again - for other clubs in the same group. Each with slightly different requirements, different data stacks, and no real alignment. What should’ve been scalable quickly became fragmented. “If I change the model for one club,” they told us, “I have to change it for the other.”

This isn’t a one-off. It's a symptom. Football organisations are hiring brilliant people - and burying them under infrastructure they shouldn’t have to carry.

And make no mistake - this person is brilliant.

One of the most gifted individuals we’ve met in this space. Technically sharp, strategically minded, and deeply attuned to the nuance of football decision-making. The kind of person who sees around corners - and quietly builds the systems others rely on.

But instead of applying that talent to solving the questions they were hired for, they spend most of their time maintaining pipelines, rewriting scripts, and fixing upstream problems.

They weren’t building competitive advantage - they were firefighting infrastructure.

That should concern everyone.

Not just because it’s inefficient. But because it’s wasteful. Clubs aren’t just losing time - they’re losing the full impact of the people they’ve hired.

Even when tools are built, risks remain. They spoke about how easily AI tools can lead clubs astray - creating the illusion of insight while eroding judgement. How surface-level metrics can bias scouts before they’ve watched a minute of footage. And how the wrong systems - no matter how slick - can quietly lead clubs to poor decisions.

Their belief was clear: data should sharpen thinking, not replace it. Tools should empower decisions - not automate them blindly. And the people doing the work? They deserve better foundations.

That’s the spirit we admire.

Not because it’s flashy. But because it’s honest.

This person didn’t set out to become an infrastructure lead. They were trying to help their club work better. And when the tools weren’t there, they built them. But not every club has someone who can do that. Nor should they have to.

That’s why we’re building Pelly.

Not to replace the people doing this work - but to make sure they don’t have to do it all alone.