Findings and field notes on data in football, from the team building Gaffer.https://gaffer.team/https://gaffer.team/journal/chemistry-beats-talent/https://gaffer.team/journal/chemistry-beats-talent/At the 2022 World Cup a measure of off-ball chemistry predicted the final standings better than any talent rating did. We did not run the study. We read it carefully, and the honest version is sharper than the headline: talent buys you a ticket into the elite group and almost nothing beyond it.Mon, 15 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://gaffer.team/journal/belgian-transfer-hit-rate/https://gaffer.team/journal/belgian-transfer-hit-rate/We counted every fee-paying signing in the Belgian first division over ten seasons. On a fair reading half never became regular starters or profitable resales, paying more barely moved the odds, and the variance was all in who did the buying.Wed, 10 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://gaffer.team/journal/wc-2026-predictions/https://gaffer.team/journal/wc-2026-predictions/We built all 48 teams from the players up, ran the 2026 World Cup through a five-million-run Monte Carlo simulation, and never once showed our model what anyone else thought. It put France narrowly ahead of a wide-open top four, ranked Belgium a respectable ninth, and matched the prediction markets almost exactly. Yes, we ran the Belgium numbers first.Wed, 10 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://gaffer.team/journal/data-providers-landscape/https://gaffer.team/journal/data-providers-landscape/A neutral map of who actually makes football data and the layers it passes through, from the primary collectors down to the APIs and tracking vendors clubs buy from.Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT