Chris Markham has been named as Huddersfield Town’s new sporting director. It is a forward-thinking appointment but also one with a sentimental edge given that Markham is a local lad who was at the club during their Premier League promotion season.
Speaking to Markham over lunch recently near his home in Lindley, Huddersfield's stadium can be seen in the distance. A reminder that this is a homecoming for one of the brightest young sporting directors around. At 39, his experience is already varied.
His football journey began at Huddersfield as their first-team analyst, but he has a master's degree in sports psychology. "I think that has shaped everything," he tells Sky Sports. "It has certainly helped me. Being aware of biases made me question things."
Having worked with the England national teams, playing an unseen but crucial role in modernising the approach to penalties, he joins Huddersfield after four years at Bolton Wanderers in which the club earned one promotion and came close to a second.
He holds the equivalent of the pro licence in talent identification and is across the advances in artificial intelligence that will inevitably transform how the job is done. "It is going to save so much time. Clubs will be able to supercharge their scouting reports."
But what comes across clearly when talking to Markham is that being a successful sporting director is about marrying that technical knowledge with the human instinct. This is his story…
Solid grounding at Huddersfield
Markham was just 22 years old when he first joined Huddersfield. At the time, the Terriers were at the vanguard of football's data revolution. "We had Prozone back in the day, one of the few clubs who did." It presented a chance for a digitally-savvy youngster.
Modestly, he puts that early foray into football down to the fact that he "could work a laptop" but with the help of the late Steve Black at Huddersfield, a mentor to England rugby star Jonny Wilkinson, he spent eight years as the club's first-team analyst.
"It was too good to be true, really. They had the software but no one to use it. I hoped that I could make a difference. I started linking the video to the data and really thinking about how to impact the coaches. I was in at the deep end and it grew from there.
"I was straight into a pressurised first-team environment, where we had to win. It was a brilliant opportunity, working with different coaches, different personalities. We progressed every season all the way until David Wagner came in and got us promoted."
While his start in the game may have been due to his technical proficiency, after 17 years working in football, steeped in the game, Markham doesn't consider himself a mere data guy. "I always try to come at it from a football perspective," he explains.
"Ultimately, the people who need to implement it are the coaches and the players on the grass. It has to be football language, no jargon. And if you are not making an impact on the grass then you are not making an impact." Indeed, he is mindful of data's limits.
"Data can tell you what you want it to tell you so the problem has reversed. If you can't challenge the algorithms then it is just the same as when I first started and you felt you could not challenge the chief scout because they had the knowledge and that was it.
"At Bolton, we actually collected our own data to decide what is important to us as a club, to our game model. What is the problem we are trying to solve? And if the data does not answer that question then collect your own." He learned that with England…
Penalty project transformed career
Markham left Huddersfield first time around to take up a position within the Football Association. "It was a new role, an in-house applied research department, providing tournament support, coordinating intelligence from scouts across all age groups."
His work there coincided with what Markham describes as "the golden summer" when every age-group reached an international final but it is the events of the following year for which his work is remembered. "The penalty project gets the most attention."
Markham was tasked with helping England improve their penalty record, with the men's team having been eliminated from three European Championships and three World Cups in shootouts. "It comes back to that thing of trying to answer a football question."
The question was simple. What do England need to do to win penalty shootouts? "I went back through the previous five England managers and there was a quote from each of them saying you cannot replicate it." But that explanation never did feel satisfactory.
Markham explains: "There was a blank canvas to research it. We looked at it from a biomechanical perspective and from a psychological perspective. It was about studying what worked, what didn't, interviewing people involved in the previous shootouts."
Many details studied in that project, such as taking a moment after the referee's whistle, are now well known. "It was about examining different parts of the shootout, not just the kick itself." Gareth Southgate embraced it all and it made a difference.
England's shootout win over Colombia at the 2018 World Cup, England's first ever at that tournament, felt cathartic for the nation. "It was absolutely nerve-wracking. We were based back at St George's Park working almost 24 hours a day," Markham recalls.
"The best thing was Gareth's press conference before the Colombia game where he basically said we could not be more prepared for penalties. Winning the shootout was amazing, obviously, but the whole point of the project was that everyone felt prepared.
"I provided the strategy behind it but it was not me who delivered on the day. Gareth had the ability to take that information, get the dosage right, show the leadership to present and frame it in the right way for the players. He delivered everything to perfection."
Markham smiles at the memory - and the legacy of that work. It is common now to see a teammate holding the ball to take the pressure off the penalty taker. "It is only after taking a step back that you realise how significant it was. It transformed my career."
Pride at his role in Bolton's rise
Markham went into Bolton in 2021 with the club at a low ebb, 20th in League Two. He left in February with them having lost out on a return to the Championship in a Wembley playoff final the previous May. "We were one game away. A sliding doors moment."
The job was a chance for Markham to take the next step as a sporting director. "To build something from scratch, using what I had learned with England and apply it. As the job evolved, there was more responsibility for the academy, for medical and sports science.
"The skill now of the sporting director, as I see it, is like that of an interpreter. You have to be able to speak to the coaching staff who have not come from that background but you also have to be able to speak to the data scientists and contextualise the information.
"We should have gone up but I left the club in a better position than I found it and I am proud of the processes we put in place."
What were the processes? "We had more eyes on players from a scouting perspective than anyone at that level, watching, analysing, collecting data. But recruitment was a challenge because we were recruiting for two leagues every summer," he explains.
Markham is proud of some of the players that he helped bring to Bolton. Conor Bradley arrived on loan from Liverpool. "Conor was just a really good fit for us." James Trafford, now an England international goalkeeper, came in on loan from Manchester City.
"You could see the pedigree they had but it was about doing the due diligence on them as people. James had been on the bench at Accrington having made a couple of mistakes but he had the mentality. Both had supportive families and the right attitude.
"He played a lot of games and came back on loan the next season. It was great for him. and us. The fans loved him. Conor was so energetic and he was just absolutely on it from minute one. You knew that he was going to be a top Premier League player."
Back to the start at Huddersfield
Following this conversation, Markham agreed a deal to return to Huddersfield. It is a great fit from a family perspective. He has three children aged seven and under and this is his home. But it is also an opportunity to make an impact again where it all began.
If there was a regret from first time around it is that he left on the eve of the club's Premier League promotion. Right now, with Huddersfield Town eighth in League One, getting back there feels a long way away. But Markham's arrival is a step in the right direction.