Manchester United have an unsung hero in the transfer market – and Omar Berrada namechecked him
Man Utd have started to improve in recruitment and a big reason for that is their increased use of data in the market.
Omar Berrada has praised Manchester United’s recruitment(Image: 2025 Catherine Ivill – AMA)
Sir Jim Ratcliffe doesn’t tend to mince his words and when he spoke about Manchester United’s use of data in 2024, he let rip. “We’re still in the last century on data analysis,” the club’s co-owner said, lambasting the failure to keep up in an area that had been transformational within football.
While Liverpool had used data to win the Premier League and Brighton and Brentford to establish themselves in the division, United were still relying on the whims of their managers and old-fashioned scouting systems.
Ratcliffe, to his credit, could see which way the wind was blowing and was determined to do something about. Experts now consider United’s use of data to be among the best in the Premier League and the embrace of numbers has been so great that the club’s head honcho when it comes to data was even namechecked by chief executive Omar Berrada this week.
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Berrada was talking about United’s recruitment. About what might lie ahead in this summer window, why things had gone so well and the stance they will take to ensure they get good value.
“I think when I look at the football leadership team, plus the investment that we’ve made in Michael Sansoni’s team on the data side, we’re in a pretty good shape and I think the quality of the decisions will continue to improve as the team settles and we continue investing in those areas,” he said.
The decision to name Sansoni and include him in a discussion about the team leading on transfers felt telling. The club’s director of data and AI is now a key figure inside Old Trafford and his team drive strategy decisions, as well as advising on recruitment.
A University of Southampton graduate, Sansoni joined United in April 2025 after more than a decade with the Mercedes F1 team and made an immediate impact. Part of his work in the first window helped convince the club that Bryan Mbeumo and Matheus Cunha were the right targets.
Data will again play a big role in United’s transfer activity this summer. The club have tracked Ederson for a while, but the numbers stack up well on the 26-year-old midfielder. Carlos Baleba is another who scores highly on data metrics.
While there have been painful job cuts at Old Trafford since Ratcliffe’s arrival more than two years ago, the data department has been strengthened, with new recruits regularly joining the team. The Ineos boss made it clear early on that United had to improve in that area.
“It doesn’t really exist here,” he said of data. “We’re still in the last century on data analysis. There’s an immense amount of useful data that we can get from data analysis and we’re in the ‘very poor’ bracket with data analysis here.”
Nobody is making that point anymore. Not only are United among the best in the league at crunching the numbers and working out what they mean, but the head of that department is being publicly praised when it comes to recruitment.
Now Sansoni and his team need to make the summer of 2026 as successful as the first window in which United truly embraced data.
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