In soccer, build-up play is when a team uses short passes to move the ball from the defensive third into the attacking half.
In many ways, the groundbreaking relationship between the sport analytics program in Syracuse University’s Falk College of Sport and the Oldham Athletic Association Football Club in Oldham, Greater Manchester, England, has been a build-up play that’s resulting in unique “scoring opportunities” for sport analytics students and Oldham Athletic.
In this case, the goalkeeper who had the ball and started the play was Sport Analytics Professor Shane Sanders, who about four years ago had met James Reade at a sports analytics conference in Spain. Reade is a professor of economics at the University of Reading in Reading, Berkshire, England, and a diehard Oldham fan.
Last year, when Sanders was working with Falk College student Ava Uribe and Associate Sport Analytics Professor Justin Ehrlich on soccer-related research, he reached out to Reade for help with collecting data and ideas on how best to mine that data for actionable insights. With Uribe, a member of the Syracuse University women’s soccer team, as lead author, the research was selected among thousands of entrants as one of seven finalists in the research paper competition at the prestigious MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston.
In advance of the conference, Reade visited Falk College and was amazed to learn of the work being done by sport analytics students with Syracuse University athletics and professional teams and leagues around the world. And to cap off Reade’s visit to the United States, the Falk College team’s research on penalty kicks won the research paper competition as Uribe became the first female lead author on the winning team in MIT Sloan’s 19-year history.
“People here (in England) might look at this and think, ‘What is this Syracuse place?’’’ Reade says. “But once you know about it, it really makes you start to think about the possibilities.”
Darren Royle, the CEO of Oldham Athletic who has a background in sport analytics, created an Academic Advisory Board that includes out-of-the-box thinkers and passionate football fans like Reade (Oldham is the only professional club in England with such a board). So, with the ball now in his possession, Reade passed the idea of working with Syracuse University along to Royle, who says there was a “keen appetite on both sides” to create an innovative partnership by sharing knowledge and providing opportunities for sport analytics students to work with Oldham.
“What we found was a real pool of talent and a high level of skill by the students with what they’ve done so far,” Royle says. “They’ve been very diligent around this, and their work already has fed into our (player) recruitment process.”
The build-up play of the partnership progressed in early December at the second Football Analytics Conference hosted by Oldham in conjunction with Syracuse University and the University of Reading. Professor Rodney Paul, chair of the Department of Sport Analytics, sport analytics graduate Joshua Freson ’23, and Falk Director of Corporate Partnerships and External Engagement Francesco Riverso have been involved with the relationship from the start and played key roles in the conference.
Professor and Department Chair of Sport Analytics Rodney Paul takes part in a panel discussion during the Football Analytics Conference 2025. (Photo: Oldham AFC)
“This was a rare opportunity to work with a club that combines deep tradition with a genuine commitment to innovation and education,” Paul says. “Oldham’s history gives the partnership immediate credibility, but what truly stood out was how deeply Darren and James care about education at every level, from young children to adults engaged in lifelong learning.
“Their initiatives in Manchester have the potential to be transformative for the local community, and it was important to me that Syracuse and Falk College sport analytics be part of something that connects football, education, and social impact in such a meaningful way,” Paul says.
High-Level Insights
In 1994, Oldham Athletic reached the Football Association (FA) Cup semifinals and was less than a minute away from winning 1-0 in extra time when the legendary Manchester United Football Club scored the tying goal and the game ended in a 1-1 draw. Manchester United won the replay 4-1, starting Oldham on a 30-year spiral that eventually relegated the team out of the English Football League (EFL) pyramid and into Non-League Football.
But under new ownership and Royle’s leadership, Oldham clawed its way back and earned a promotion to EFL League Two–the fourth level of EFL–for the 2025-26 season. So, with the club now facing stiffer competition and in the market for better players, it made sense to turn over every stone, including a greater emphasis on analytics.
Starting in June, 15 sport analytics students embarked on a series of data analysis projects aimed at helping the club identify a player’s style of play, strengths and weaknesses, mindset and character (for example, how does the player respond after a difficult match?, proneness to injuries, and salary expectations.
“Some of the work the students have been doing is novel; certainly, it hasn’t been done before in our league,” Royle says. “It has fitted as an extra resource for us since we had just got promoted back to the EFL and we didn’t have the structures and staffing in place that a team in the EFL might normally have.”
To oversee the students’ work, Riverso enlisted the help of Freson, a former senior data analyst for Oldham who is now an assistant data scientist for the Blackburn Rovers Football Club in Blackburn, Lancashire, England, and a data analyst for the Estonian Football Association. As a student in Falk College, Freson was the lead data analyst for the 2022 Syracuse University men’s soccer team that won the NCAA Division I national championship.
At the outset of the Oldham-Syracuse partnership, Freson planned, delegated, and supervised the students’ projects “with an equal focus on the results and professional development,” he says.
“James (Reade) and I created open-ended projects based on the needs of the club, and delegated groups of students to work on each project,” Freson says. “That allowed them to deliver high-level insights while developing their own skills and learning how to cater the end product to the end user.”
Sport analytics major Gavin Anderson ’28 is a lifelong soccer player and fan who plays for the Syracuse University men’s club team and is a fan of Tottenham Hotspur in the Premier League (the top level above the EFL). After jumping at the opportunity to work for Oldham, Anderson spent the summer working on the initial projects before being promoted to junior supervisor for data analytics and now Freson’s replacement as senior supervisor for data analytics.
Sport analytics student Gavin Anderson plays for the Syracuse University Men’s Club Soccer Team.
“Hopefully one day I’ll be working in a front office or with the analytics’ staff for a top club like Tottenham and this internship has greatly helped me prepare for that,” Anderson says. “It has offered me invaluable insight into the day-to-day operations of a club and what teams value in players and potential targets.”
Paul says perhaps the biggest benefit for the students is that they’re operating at a truly professional level in terms of expectations and impact as they’re working with real data, real constraints, and real decision-making timelines.
“While we have strong partnerships elsewhere, the scope and continuity of the work with Oldham is unique; students are not just completing stand-alone projects, but contributing to an ongoing analytics and strategy process,” Paul says. “That level of immersion accelerates learning, builds confidence, and prepares students to operate in global sport environments in ways that are difficult to replicate in a classroom alone.”
‘We See The Synergies’
The Football Analytics Conference in December had a distinct Syracuse feel as Riverso secured the keynote speaker, Sudarshan “Suds” Gopaladesikan, technical director at Newcastle United in the English Premier League; Freson presented one of the student projects (Quantifying Grit: Growth, Resilience, Instinct and Tenacity); and Paul participated in a panel discussion and engaged in numerous other sessions throughout the event. Gopaladesikan, incidentally, spoke to sport analytics students during Falk College’s first trip to Italy in 2024 for Paul’s course that explores how data is revolutionizing soccer.
The conference also provided an opportunity for the Syracuse University contingent and Oldham officials to discuss short- and long-term opportunities. One potential collaboration centers on SportsTown, a regeneration project led by Oldham and Royle to create a sports, education, and health campus for high school-age students with elite sporting, health, and educational facilities.
“I see this developing as a long-term partnership that allows Syracuse University students to gain invaluable professional experience while also allowing Oldham to conduct analysis way beyond their means otherwise,” Freson says. “This partnership will hopefully allow for exchange programs down the line, allowing students to get on-site experience in the EFL and hopefully lead to students getting research projects published in conjunction with Oldham Athletic, Syracuse University, and the University of Reading.”
The partners also discussed a U.S.-based version of the conference, either as a standalone event or in conjunction with the Sports, Entertainment and Innovation Conference (SEICon) in Las Vegas that Falk College hosts along with the UNLV Sports Innovation Institute in collaboration with the Las Vegas-based guest experience agency Circle. And they’re already looking ahead to the third Football Analytics Conference at Oldham in January 2027.
“You guys are unique because of your founder (Paul) and your model for students,” Royle says. “We really like the thinking around it. So we've kind of mapped ourselves to your culture, philosophy, and strategy and we see all the synergies.”
For the spring, the focus will remain on the students and their projects as a new group of about a dozen students are working for Oldham throughout the semester. Reade says their analysis will continue to focus on player value and recruitment and the data they have produced so far has already provided dividends for the club that sits at “mid-table” in the standings and remains in the running for a playoff spot in its first year in EFL League Two.
Professor of economics at the University of Reading James Reade presents during the Football Analytics Conference 2025. (Photo: Oldham AFC)
As the build-up play continues, the possibilities remain endless as the upstart football club from the global center of excellence for the world’s most popular sport teams up with students and faculty from the academic center of the sport analytics universe in the U.S.
“Football in England doesn’t quite have to compete for the attention of fans in the way that all the major sports in the U.S. have to and that’s why your analytics has been building up for many years,” Reade says. “We have a lot to learn and so for Oldham, and from a research perspective, now having the connection to Syracuse is gold dust and very valuable for us.”