Neutrals may wrongly pronounce Manchester United’s Europa League opponents as ‘Midget Land’ and there will be a sizeable difference in resources when this small Danish club meet the Premier League giants on Thursday.
But Midtjylland (really pronounced mid-tee-land) are crunching the numbers to beat the odds, a minor club intent on a major upset in the tournament’s knockout stages.
Leicester City are being lauded for upsetting the balance of power in the Premier League, but their story is nothing compared to Midtjylland who were on the verge of bankruptcy before betting mogul Matthew Benham bought a controlling stake in July 2014 and they won the Danish title immediately.
Matthew Benham (left) and Rasmus Ankersen celebrate after Midtjylland clinched the Danish Superliga
The club are not strong financially but use an innovative model to try and out think the opponent
Benham also owns Brentford, where he met Rasmus Ankersen who worked with the club for his former company 21st Club — a London-based enterprise who use statistics, figures and algorithms to give football clubs an edge and are working with Premier League sides such as Arsenal, Crystal Palace, Southampton, Everton and Newcastle.
When Benham bought Midtjylland he installed Ankersen, formerly a promising youth player there before a knee injury ended his career at 19, as chairman and the pair discussed what a club would look like without eyes and ears. Turns out it looks pretty good.
‘If David has to beat Goliath he cannot use the same weapons, you have to use different weapons,’ Ankersen told Sportsmail. David has turned up to this fight with a laptop under one arm, an iPad beneath the other and a calculator between his teeth.
‘One of our weapons is the academy,’ the Dane adds. They have a flourishing youth system and set a target of 35 per cent of first-team minutes coming from players who were developed there. Last month, they played in Mexico’s biggest youth tournament, the 2016 Copa Chivas, and beat Argentinian giants Boca Juniors in the final. Tottenham’s Under 18s also entered the competition.
Ankersen worked with the side with former company 21st Club — who use statistics, figures and algorithms
‘We can’t outspend the competition, but we can out think them,’ Ankersen, who is quick to point out they still use traditional methods while trying to gain a numerical edge, explains. ‘Man United are the opposite, they can outspend almost anyone, but sometimes it’s more difficult to be rich than poor.
‘Being poor makes you creative. Innovation comes from below, it comes from poor clubs, who don't have resources. That scarcity forces you into different thinking paths to innovation.’
One particularly innovate approach they are considering is applying the 10,000-hour rule to their youngsters. The theory was invented by Swedish psychologist Anders Ericsson that greatness can be attained if someone practices the correct way of doing something for 10,000 hours.
Midtjylland have already spoken about targeting Manchester United with set-pieces during the clash
Benham, who made his fortune statistical evaluation and gambling, also owns Championship side Brentford
It was popularised by Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, where he cites examples of The Beatles practising in Germany for 10,000 hours before they became famous in England and Microsoft founder Bill Gates spending 10,000 hours programming on a high school computer as a teenager.
Not a typical approach, but Ankersen is not your typical football club chairman. He is probably the only one in Europe with a man-bun — a pony tail curled at the back of the head, like Andy Carroll — and is more comfortable in a v-neck t-shirt and blazer than a suit and tie. He is still only 32 and developed a real appetite for statistics over a dinner with Blake Wooster.
Wooster was working for stats experts Prozone at the time and the pair consumed much wine as they wrote down ideas for how numbers could improve sport on the back of a serviette. Wooster woke up with a sore head but the semblance of a business, so they set it up, Ankersen only leaving — he still remains an investor — when the role at Midtjylland arose.
Jess Thorup helped the Danish side this far and they already have one Premier League scalp in Southampton
‘The old school scouts might feel threatened by the nerds with the laptops,’ Wooster said when Sportsmail visited their high-tech office, ’but we get an analyst into the club to sit down with the coaches, managers and scouts and find out how we can help them.’
They have created Evolution software which maps results, match statistics and football trends. In the week before David Moyes was sacked at Real Sociedad, they emailed him to tell him he was not going mad, his side were playing better than the league table suggested.
’Managers often speak to the media after matches and say, we lost but our performance didn’t deserve to lose. We provide evidence to show that,’ Wooster said.
Midtjylland are keen to blood new youngsters and 18-year-old Mikkel Duelund is already a regular
They encourage clubs to think like traders; see players as assets with depreciating value, pointing out that Arsene Wenger showed he is particularly good at it when he made the unpopular decisions to sell Thierry Henry and Patrick Vieira.
They talk about the ‘average age fallacy’ — average age of a squad means little, they have evidence that when clubs have more ‘peak age’ players (24-30) they perform best. They ask why Cristiano Ronaldo keeps taking free kicks for Real Madrid, when he barely ever scores them.
Clubs are encouraged to think like traders; see players as assets with depreciating value like Arsene Wenger
When it comes to recruitment, Wooster explains, their system is similar to Amazon. When someone buys a product on the internet retailer, they handily suggest several other items users who bought that also paid for. If a club scout says they’re interested in a Belgian striker at Anderlecht, of a certain size, age and status, 21st club can recommend 10 more of a similar ilk to consider.
Can laptops, computer programmes and mathematical experts really tip the odds in Midtjylland’s favour against United’s billions? Don’t bet against it.
The Frenchman made the unpopular decision to sell star assets Patrick Vieira and Thierry Henry
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