Jack Coles works for Coventry City in his day job. In his spare time, he helps an African country tap into their large diaspora
By Richard Foster for The Football Mine
Jack Charlton led the Republic of Ireland from international also-rans to the World Cup quarter-finals. When appointed manager of the national team in the late 1980s, he cast the net for players far and wide, searching through genealogies and tracking down anybody with Irish roots. It was a controversial approach, but it worked. Fast forward thirty-odd years and another Jack C is undertaking similar searches, but this time on behalf Guinea-Bissau. For a country with a population of just two million, the need to expand the pool of players is understandable. This is where Jack Coles plays a crucial role.
Coles, who worked as a recruitment analyst at Leicester for four years before taking over as head of data analysis at Coventry City, discovered that Guinea-Bissau were missing out on footballers while playing a computer game. “While playing Football Manager, I became aware of the facility to switch players from one country to a different nation,” he says. “Initially I looked into the links between Curaçao and the Netherlands and soon realised that there were plenty of players who had dual nationality.”
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