TGG Live 2024: The report

More than 450 delegates from clubs, federations and organisations around the world gathered at St George’s Park last week for Training Ground Guru’s biggest conference to date.

TGG Live aims to bring different departments and organisations together under one roof in order to gain insights, share ideas and network. Over the course of two days, there were a total of 21 sessions, with topics ranging from Sporting Directors to Artificial Intelligence to Neuroscience.

The sessions were a variety of presentations, panels and Q&As and the speakers came from organisations including Arsenal, AS Monaco, Brighton, Everton, The Football Association, Manchester United, Right to Dream and UEFA.

The themes on Day One (Monday September 9th) were Sporting Directors, Strategy and Analytics, with the focus on Day Two (September 10th) on Academies, Coaching and Performance.

The Headline Sponsor of the Conference was Teamworks, the Operating System for Sport, and this year we also introduced a Networking Dinner, with 100 speakers, partners and delegates, which was sponsored by Catapult.

Our other sponsors were Collinson Tensile, Eyeball, Footovision, Gemini Sports, IMPECT, Modulek, The Player Care Group, SkillCorner, Stats Perform, STATSports, Trackman, 3v3UK and Twelve. Some took to the stage to present, while others were in our Exhibition Hall to show off their products and services.

TGG Live began in style, with a superb keynote from Tom Vernon, the founder and Executive Vice Chair of Right to Dream, in which he outlined the inspirational story of how his organisation grew from a small number of youngsters staying at his home in Ghana, to becoming Africa’s leading Academy, as well as owning FC Nordsjaelland in Denmark, San Diego in the MLS and Academies in Egypt and Sierra Leone.

Plymouth Argyle Chairman and Owner Simon Hallett followed, explaining how his background in asset management had enabled him to make better decisions in football, helping the club to rise from League Two to the Championship under his stewardship.

The Sporting Director Panel is always one of our most popular sessions at TGG Live and this year was no different, with Norwich City’s Ben Knapper, Everton’s Kevin Thelwell and MK Dons’ Liam Sweeting taking to the stage to discuss Navigating Uncertainty, with Matt Roberts again providing expert moderation.

Arsenal Head of Football Platforms Danny Karbassiyoon discussed the role of technology in football in a fascinating fireside chat with Gareth Quinn from our Headline Sponsor Teamworks.

After the break the focus was on Loans and Pathways, with Arsenal’s Sam Hayball and Brighton's Gordon Greer in conversation with me about how they manage the process at their respective clubs. Then the spotlight was very much turned to Analytics and Decision-Making, with presentations from: Turid Knaak and Stephen Clarke from IMPECT outlining How to Use Contextual Data to Communicate and Convince; Mo Bobat, the Head of Sporting Intelligence at Derby County on Harnessing Intelligence to Inform Decision-Making; Manchester United’s Chris Shumba on The Crucial Role of Data Infrastructure; and Gijs Beenker from Stats Perform on Applying AI Insights to Inform Recruitment Profiling.

Our popular Data Science Panel was once again sponsored by SkillCorner, with their Head of Customer Solutions, Tom Goodall, putting a series of scenarios to Vignesh Jayanth (AS Monaco), Lee Mooney (MUD Analytics) and John-Mark Sisman (Zelus Analytics) in an entertaining and interactive session.

There was a change of tone and topic to close the day, with author and former Olympian Cath Bishop explaining Why the Long Win Matters in Football.

After our Networking Drinks and Dinner, most of our Day One delegates returned for Day Two, which kicked off with a presentation by Dr Claire-Marie Roberts, the Performance Director at Coventry City, about Establishing an Elite Performance Culture.

“One of my biggest bugbears is pseudo sciences that perpetuate in first-team football - in all of football in fact,” she said.

We had a heavyweight Coaching Panel of Rui Faria, the most successful Assistant in football history, Reading Manager Ruben Selles and former Bristol City and Sunderland boss Lee Johnson in conversation with our host, Sarah Mulkerrins, to discuss topics including tactics, data, leadership and more.

Brentford Academy Director Stephen Torpey was next on stage to explain how the club are going about building The Most Caring and Progressive Academy in the World and after the break the audience heard from Mark Carter, the FA’s National Lead for Women’s Player Insights, who presented on Exploring Potential with Data; and Jes Buster Madsen, the Head of Research and Development at FC Copenhagen, who exclusively revealed the findings of his research project about Analysing Cognition in Elite Football.

In the afternoon, the hugely-experienced Paul Balsom, who has worked in senior roles for Leicester City, Sweden and now UEFA, gave insights into Building a Multi-Disciplinary Team. Our Performance Innovation Panel featured John Iga and Jeroen Peters in conversation with Ben Rosenblatt, the former England fitness coach and Founder of 292 Performance.

We were delighted to feature a session with local team Burton Albion, who train at St George's Park and were recently taken over by the Nordic Football Group, with Manager Mark Robinson and First-Team Coach and club legend John Brayford taking to the stage to discuss Building a Strategy Around Youth.

The conference ended in fitting style with Hugo Sheckter of The Player Care Group delivering research and insights around Player Care: Reducing the Risk of Players Failing and then Simone Lewis, Director of Performance Focus Ltd and the former Head of Learning at the Premier League, on Developing your People, which had been a theme throughout the event.

"I found it really interesting. It had a very strong start, with Tom from Right to Dream. I think it was nice to ground everybody. In football you can get carried away with the money and high performance level and it was nice to bring it back down to community." (Kathryn Stuart, Player Insights National Lead, Football Association)

"I'm really getting interested in some of the neuroscience and cognitive measurements, so that was really interesting. And the panels are always great, to get a feel for how the same role or type of role looks different at different clubs and in different contexts. It’s invaluable to see that and realise how varied it can be." (Josh Ewens, First Team Fitness Coach, West Ham United)

"It’s great. You meet so many different people from so many different clubs, but from different industries as well. We all have the same processes, but it's great to listen to the guys and also communicating and connecting. Hopefully we'll be having further communications down the line. It's been brilliant." (Peter Ramage, Assistant Player Loans Manager, Newcastle United)