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Berten Knaepen is one of the quieter voices in football's data revolution, but the impact of MyGamePlan's co-founder and CEO deserves recognition. We sat down with him to discuss how he built the platform, where football analytics is heading, and why he thinks the next generation of football professionals needs data literacy.
The Start
Berten didn't come from a football background. He studied software engineering and started his career building solutions for completely different industries. But he became obsessed with a question: why don't football clubs have integrated access to video and data? Why are data and footage living in separate ecosystems?
"When I first looked at what analysts were doing, I saw them switching between 5 different tools just to get a complete picture. Video over here, event data over there, tracking data in a third place. It was inefficient and it was limiting how fast they could work."
So in 2021, with Dries Deprest, he decided to build what analysts actually needed: a single platform that combined event data, tracking data, and video in one synchronized interface.
What He Got Right
The decision to integrate Opta event data with SkillCorner tracking data early on was crucial. It meant clubs weren't forced into false choices about whose data to use. They had both, automatically connected to the same video clip. It sounds simple now, but it was a significant technical and business decision at the time.
"We didn't want to be evangelical about one data source over another. Different situations need different data. A coach assessing a left-back in the box might need tracking heatmaps. A recruiter assessing a passer might need event-based progression metrics. We built the platform to give you both."
Where It's Heading
When we asked Berten where he sees football analytics in five years, he focused on accessibility, not complexity.
"The industry is moving toward democratization. Right now, only the biggest clubs have the resources to hire full data teams. In five years, a mid-sized club or national team should be able to run sophisticated analysis with a much smaller team, because the platform does more of the heavy lifting."
He also emphasized the importance of video. "Data tells you what happened. Video tells you why. The best analysis marries both. And the fastest way to get there is to have them synchronized."
On The Next Generation
One thing Berten speaks passionately about is education. He believes every coach, analyst, and executive in football should have baseline data literacy, even if they're not building models or running regressions.
"You need to understand what a metric is measuring, and more importantly, what it's not measuring. You need to question the data. The worst outcome would be coaches trusting analysis blindly instead of using it as a second opinion to their own observations."
It's a philosophy that shapes MyGamePlan's product design: tools should be intuitive enough that non-specialists can use them, but transparent enough that experts can dig deeper.
What Keeps Him Focused
Despite the company's growth, Berten stays focused on a simple goal: help clubs make faster, better decisions.
"Every feature we ship has to solve a real problem. We're not trying to be everything to everyone. We're trying to be indispensable to the clubs using us, and we measure that by how much time we save their analysts and how much more confident their coaches feel in their decisions."
Want to learn how integrated data can power your club's decisions? Book a call.
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