Football Development Institute
Institute

Board


Marcin Gabor

CEO, author of the FDI concept

Founder of the Football Development Institute, also acting as CEO. Author of “Football Identity of FDI”, concept, projects and content related to the Institute. The complex concept of the FDI was based on its own football understanding as a sport, its own game understanding, and its own content structures within the “Football Level Identification Indicators”. Gabor’s individual path is a combination of an autonomous approach, strong convictions, and fifteen years of observation, analysis, work, defining knowledge, gathering experience, as well as creating original concepts and content-related mechanisms.


Marcin Gabor has been involved in professional football for more than a dozen years. He started as a journalist and football commentator, only to take a completely different direction a few years later. The direction of co-creating football. In 2010, he inaugurated his work in Clubs (including Cracovia, GKS Katowice, Miedź Legnica). Gabor has held various specialized roles: Sports Director, Head of Football Concept, Coach Educator, Sports Director Academy, Coach, Chief Analyst. Sports Director with an original vision for this role in terms of position profile and Club Development Model. Conceptual Coach with a precisely defined Game Model and Work Model. For the past ten years he has been sharing his knowledge during his own seminars/webinars, UEFA coaching courses, conferences for Coaches, Sports Directors, Analysts (Poland, Germany, Austria, Spain). He has given guest lectures at the International Football Institute (Ismaning/Munich). Over the years he has trained and prepared Coaches, Sports Directors and Analysts individually, proudly being able to boast “alumni” currently working in professional football. He has written expert articles on football understanding, game understanding, tactics, Game Model, Club development, Coach’s and Sports Director’s work.

Marcin Gabor was professionally active for many years in Poland, and has been active in Germany and other European countries since 2017. He bases his work on strict content principles, an in-depth developed football philosophy, an individual “Football Identity” and absolute consistency. He defined the proprietary concepts. Here are some of them: Club Development Model; Sports Department Organization Model; Comprehensive Football Concept; Game Model; Methodical Model; Analytical Model; Complementary Team and Player Development Model; Sports Department Management Model; Specialist Management Model (e.g., Sports Director, Coach, Analyst): Profile, Work Model, Development System, Work Evaluation System, Recruitment System; Evaluation of Team and Player Development; “Complex Football Concept” Unification Model (Academy).

Since 2015, Marcin Gabor has supported Clubs in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, providing strategic advice and improving the football entities’ level of operation based on a self-developed program. The referred program covered ten areas: Club Management, Football Intellectual Foundations, Football & Management, Communication & Marketing, Finances, Legal & Licensing, Technology, Infrastructure, Psychology, Compliance & Integrity. In 2016, Marcin Gabor took over as Head of LIGEN.analytics at the German brand of the same name. He defined the “Contextual Analytics Concept”, designed a number of professional analytics products and solutions (team analysis, individual analysis in a team context, contextual analytics data, interactive online platform, analytics consulting), which are now used in Clubs across Germany, France, Austria, Switzerland and Spain. Gabor has built and conceptually prepared an analytics team of 120 people. He has worked with Bundesliga clubs or the German Football Association (DFB), among others.

Marcin Gabor is also the author of the international Football Club Management Conference series, dealing with management and development of professional Clubs. The non-standard concept of the conference covers the simulation of transformation and long-term development of a Club on the foundation of the original “Club Development Model of FDI”.

The portfolio of football ventures managed by Marcin Gabor also includes the TrainerPRO brand. It had the character of an education and consulting company in the past, while since the transformation it has been engaged in providing intelligent tools for training, analytical and organizational work. At various stages, Gabor led two other football brands. KarrierePRO was a recruitment platform in the world of football, while ScoutingPRO operated as a scouting and analytics agency.

At the moment Marcin Gabor is using all of the above experiences for the benefit of the Football Development Institute. Over the next several years, he intends – on the basis of the Institute’s complex and complementary activities – to change the understanding of this sport, the game itself and raise the level of footbal in Europe.

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