Meet Lucy Rushton: the English analytics expert masterminding Atlanta United’s success in MLS After a seven year career in England, Rushton left for the US and is quickly forging a reputation at the Eastern Conference league leaders

In a four month spell between March and July this year, three new MLS attendance records were set – each of them for an Atlanta United game. In fact, all five of MLS’s record attendances have been for Atlanta United games. But their impact on North American football cannot be quantified in numbers alone.

In just two years, Atlanta United have changed the landscape in MLS. There’s a good chance you’ve seen the scenes. They bounce around social media every so often: the Tifos, the flags, the Icelandic Thunderclap which has been adopted by the club’s supporters. But on the field, too, Atlanta United have set a precedent. That is down, in no small part, to the work of Lucy Rushton.

She is the head of technical recruitment and analysis who has helped to pull together the most dynamic, exciting and entertaining team in MLS. In Josef Martinez, Atlanta United boast the league top goalscorer. In Miguel Almiron, they have the league’s most creative playmaker. And in Tata Martino, they are coached by a former Argentina and Barcelona manager.

Building from scratch

Rushton had to assemble all this, and so much more, from scratch. “Where do you even start?” she laughs. “Especially in this league where there’s a salary cap, so it’s not just a case of finding 22 players.” What’s more, expansion teams – the label given to sides entering the league for the first time – are required to sign players from a number of different sources – the transfer market, the college draft, the expansion draft, where signings can be made from other MLS clubs. In a sense, it’s a science.

Maybe that’s why analytics are generally more accepted by American football fans, and at the core of what Rushton does at Atlanta United. “If you look at all American sports, they have drafts and caps and all of that,” she says. “Fans are always looking at the numbers, perhaps more so than in England.”

Rushton would know. She held a similar role for seven years at Reading, also working at Watford beforehand. The world of football analytics was still in its infancy when Rushton first entered the sport and has seen it grown into an industry in its own right. “I have seen its development in terms of the types of roles, how analysts are treated and also in the kind of data that we have available to us,” she says.

“When I first started at Reading, I was first team analyst, opposition analyst and I was doing the scouting as well. Now, all of those roles have their own independent jobs at most Premier League clubs and at most MLS clubs as well. The growth has been phenomenal.” But in the use of analytics in the Premier League and MLS, there is a difference.

Efficiency in the transfer market

Premier League club’s have whole analytics departments of up to 10 members of staff. “Over here in MLS, if you have one first team analyst and maybe a scouting analyst then you’re doing well,” says Rushton. But the nature of MLS, with its salary caps and drafts and allocation orders, means clubs must be more efficient, particularly in their scouting. “We can’t just go spend £10-15 million on each player,” Rushton explains. “We have to be a bit more clever in how we do things.”

This involves looking at metrics that gauge a players’ productivity over a season in relation to their salary, which are published by the league in full for all to pick apart. It’s here where the crossover between sporting intuition and academic knowledge can be found in the modern game. “If you want a data analyst who is going to crunch the numbers, apply statistical models etc. then that person needs to be heavily qualified and have a background in statistics, mathematics,” says Rushton, who herself has a Master’s degree in sports performance analysis. “Do they need to know football? Not at all.” This sort of sporting and academic combination is now commonplace in the English and North American game.

In England, Rushton was something of a rarity – a woman working in a senior position at a professional football club. Now at Atlanta United, she sees MLS as a more welcoming environment for women, although was keen to stress she has never personally experienced any discrimination either side of the Atlantic. “Women’s football is so big over here that women probably have a little bit more kudos in the sense of people expect them to have an understanding of the game,” she says. “The avenues are probably slightly broader over here, but there are still very few women working in elite and professional clubs.”

Whether it’s in the development of the league, the progression of the analytics community in MLS or the booming of Atlanta United, Rushton is energised by working somewhere still growing and evolving with every passing season. “It’s exciting to be a part of something moving forward,” she says. Atlanta United’s story so far might be a successful one, but they too are learning more and more as they go along. It’s not just the players dealing in marginal gains.