Manchester United set to make three new appointments at Carrington

Man Utd's data department has been overhauled since the appointment of Michael Sansoni as director of data.

Manchester United will strengthen their growing data department with the appointment of a senior football data engineer, a senior football data scientist and a senior software engineer. Michael Sansoni joined as director of data in the summer and has been tasked with modernising the data department at Old Trafford.

Sansoni was previously the senior performance engineer at the Mercedes F1 team, where he contributed to eight world championship-winning seasons. When Sir Jim Ratcliffe acquired a minority stake in United in 2024, he concluded the data department needed to improve significantly, and investment has been approved to hire new employees.

United have advertised roles for a senior football data engineer, a senior football data scientist and a senior software engineer to support Sansoni's work in the department. A club representative said: "We’re looking for experienced, motivated people to join Michael Sansoni and his team to help set a new standard in football data. Think APIs, machine learning, AI, web tools and streaming data pipelines, we’re working on it all to drive performance on the pitch and across the whole club."

Each of the roles in the department will be based at Carrington. United refurbished the training complex at a cost of £50million to create a state-of-the-art training ground and workplace. In an interview with the United We Stand magazine last year, Ratcliffe slammed the data department at Old Trafford. “Until we are as good as anyone in the world, then it’s not good enough for Manchester United. We must have the best recruitment in the world," he said.

"Data analysis comes alongside recruitment. It doesn’t really exist here. We’re still in the last century on data analysis here. 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.

"These things don’t happen overnight. You can’t just flick a light switch and sort out recruitment. It’s all about people and we need to find the right people.”

In July, Sansoni said that United had made "meaningful progress" with "new methodologies starting to take shape and two fantastic signings, Matheus Cunha and Bryan Mbeumo".

He added: "I’ve inherited a brilliant team: smart, committed, and hungry to make a difference and together we’re building a world-class data and AI function to power decision-making across football and the wider club. The challenge is great, but so is the opportunity. We’re just getting started."

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