Shock horror.
This FT article discusses the rise in use of football analytics used by clubs to get the edge on each other. Simon Kuper is an excellent writer on all things football and this article readies us for substantial changes to the way the UK clubs are run. It's big stuff.
They commissioned some art/ magazine illustration to go alongside it. They are cute but meaningless. They exist only on the visual plane of interest. As art they are good. As analysis they are useless and trivial.
It feels like a missed opportunity to show the richness of the possibilities in real life Useful data-vis.
So much of the 'tidal wave of data' trope is so abstract that a handsome illustration of the same game (MU vs Barca) using data-views new to the readership would have been better. And more editorially engaging.
Its the FT. I think their readers are quite aware of the pressing need to create more meaning and money from the data in our world and this could have been a tangible and engaging way to educate them in how to do so.
I hope to put my money where my mouth is on a current project. Details later this year.