During the late summer of 2020, there was a growing sense of excitement among recruitment staff at Brighton’s training base, nestled between the South Downs and the mouth of the English Channel.
The scouting structure constructed by Albion owner Tony Bloom is the envy of the world game for good reason: the club signed players like Moises Caicedo, Alexis Mac Allister and Marc Cucurella for relatively small sums before selling them at a huge profit.
Bloom’s data algorithm for finding players is one of the most effective around and this time, the model had identified a 19-year-old Georgian winger at Rubin Kazan in the Russian Premier League.