FDI Experts

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: Coach, Coach Educator, Sports Director, Analyst. Conceptual Coach with a precisely defined Game Model and Work Model. Sports Director with an original vision for this role in terms of position profile and Club Development 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.

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.

Dariusz Laszczyk is a lawyer dealing with sports law. He provides assistance to players, Coaches, Clubs and Academies and Sports Agents, as well as other sports related entities. In addition to handling civil, criminal and administrative cases, he also represents his clients as an attorney before the Football Arbitration Court, operating at the Polish Football Association (PZPN), in legal disputes related to football. He conducts training and courses for people in the sports industry. He is also the author of publications on legal issues in one of the professional magazines.

Laszczyk has both a legal and economic education. He is a graduate of the Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin, Faculty of Law and Administration, majoring in Law. In addition, he is a graduate of the Poznan University of Economics, Faculty of Economics, majoring in “Business Strategy and Planning,” where he defended his postgraduate thesis on the development strategy of football academies operating in Poland in the form of foundations.

He has expertise in raising European funds, investing financial resources and project management. He also specializes in areas of debt collection, corporate receivables management and restructuring of commercial companies. In addition, the subject of his activities includes the organization of sports businesses, the running and management of football clubs and the transfer mediation of players. He has a professional interest in the topics of business development strategies, financial analysis, marketing and corporate marketing strategies and corporate tax strategies. He has participated in the founding processes of many football clubs and academies and other sports businesses, and now supports them on an ongoing basis in running and developing their businesses.

Dariusz Laszczyk is the owner of a legal firm and CEO (owner) of the Laszczyk Football Group consulting firm, as well as co-owner of the Polish Football Agency.

For several years, he has also been involved in charitable activities for people in need through his Foundation for the Support of Young and Older Generations.

Professor at the University of Lodz, an employee within the Department of Strategy and Corporate Value Management. He is also Head of the Business Analysis Center at the Faculty of Management at the University of Lodz.

Leszek Bohdanowicz was Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Widzew Łódź SA and a member of the association which owns 100% of the shares of Widzew Łódź SA until 2021. He has written columns on the management of Football Clubs for various Internet portals. He deals with issues of corporate governance, strategic management and management in football. He is the author of the book “The Practice of Football Club Management: Strategy – Structure – Identity”.

Former football player of Wisła Kraków and Sandecja Nowy Sącz.

He is certified as a Mental Trainer. Konrad holds the title of co-author of the Mental Training System™, a system for developing an athlete’s psyche. He actively helps Polish national team players, players of Ekstraklasa clubs and foreign leagues, as well as athletes of other disciplines. In terms of mental training, Konrad also supports Sports Directors and Coaches.

Currently he leads the the mental skills development process for players, students of the Sports Championship School and Coaches at the Stal Rzeszów Club. He is one of the two authors (the other is Rafal Malinowski) of a book series on mental training in football under the title “Mental Kick” (“Mentalny Kop”).

Passionate about psychology, development and travel.

Extremely active athlete – for 30 years in training. He has covered more than 44,000 kilometers, and has lifted more than 190 million kilograms.

Certified Mental Trainer and coach of the International Coach Federation. Rafal is the co-author of the Mental Training System™, a system for developing the athlete’s psyche.

On a daily basis he works with Polish national team players, with players of Ekstraklasa clubs and foreign leagues, as well as with athletes of other sports. Sports Directors and Coaches also benefit from his support.

Until recently, he was co-responsible for the mental skills development of players, students from the School of Sports Championship and Coaches at the Stal Rzeszów Club. He is one of the two authors (the other is Konrad Czapeczka) of a book series on mental training in football titled “Mental Kick” (“Mentalny Kop”).

He is passionate about psychology, development and team management.

He has held the position of Global Business Development Director Sports at SAP for many years. In this role, he has worked with numerous European federations, league organisations and Clubs, advising on developing digital strategies, building management
processes, defining internal KPIs and implementing the IT application into operations.

A person completely dedicated to football, who for more than a dozen years has been getting to know and discovering it from different perspectives. Until 2015, he acted as a player, appearing in the team of Energetyk ROW Rybnik and Skra Częstochowa, among others.

He quickly decided to become a Coach, wanting to show an original and different perspective on football in his work. He has coaching experience behind him, leading senior teams (Gwarek Ornontowice) and youth teams (GKS Tychy, Zagłębie Lubin, Cracovia). A believer in offensive football, passionate about tactics, treating the team tactics as an overriding value.

For years, he has been associated with the person of Marcin Gabor, from whom he took his non-standard way of perceiving football and who influenced his education the most. He consistently expands his training knowledge, being faithful to his own football philosophy. Sebastian places the issue of game analysis very high in his training work and uses the analytical skills he acquired at FDI on a daily basis.

He completed his master’s degree in Physical Education in Opole, and has held a UEFA A coaching license since mid-2017.

Sebastian Szweda – fitting in with his way of thinking and approach to football in the “Football Identity of FDI” – supports the educational part of the project, as well as the process of performing tactical analysis.

Former football player.

As a player he appeared, among others, in the youth teams of Lech Poznań. A few years ago he began his adventure with projects managed by Marcin Gabor. In this way, he explores the knowledge of the correct football understanding. In 2016, he was invited by Marcin Gabor to work with a German analytics brand – LIGEN.analytics. In this way, he gathered several years of experience in the role of Tactical Analyst, performing analysis for men’s and women’s teams: from the youth level to the highest competition tiers. He also worked for two years in the role of Analysis Department Manager.

Then he was appointed by Marcin Gabor as Operations Manager at the Football Development Institute. Since then, he has been in charge within the organizational and administrative areas of FDI, leading a number of projects and being involved in numerous areas of the Institute’s development. At the same time, she supervises the analytical team as part of the “Analysis & Research” department, ensuring the proper execution of analyses for Clubs from Germany, Austria, Spain and France. In addition, he performs the duties of Analytics Educator, leading the Analytics Development System for the LIGEN.analytics project. He also participates in the development process of analytics products.

In his work, he relies on standards and knowledge beyond the commonly accepted patterns in football, striving to improve on past achievements and seek new solutions.

As a goalkeeper, he appeared in the 2. Bundesliga and the Portuguese second division, among others. He represented Holstein Kiel, Borussia Mönchengladbach, Rot-Weiß Oberhausen, Wuppertaler SV and Belenenses.

After his goalkeeping adventure, he worked for several years with the German Football Federation (DFB) as a Goalkeeper Analyst and, on that basis, created profiles of the players he observed. He analyzed goalkeepers of the Brazilian, Portuguese, Serbian and Greek national teams, also analyzing goalkeepers from the list of candidates to play for the German national team.

Before the 2014 World Cup, and already during the tournament, Christoph Semmler analyzed the play of the German national team’s opponent goalkeepers for Joachim Löw’s staff.

From 2013 to 2018, he worked at Borussia Mönchengladbach, where he served as Goalkeeper Coach Coordinator for the U15-U23 teams, over the course of last season also working with the club’s first-team goalkeepers. In the 2018/19 season, he worked as Goalkeeper Coach at Belgium’s KAS Eupen. Since 2020, he has been Goalkeeper Coach for the first team of Fortuna Düsseldorf.

David Wood, has been working in the field of football since finishing his language studies in 2015. He began his adventure as an Analyst at the bookmaking company Smartodds, covering games in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. In the next step, he became engaged with the English club FC Brentford, serving as a Scout.

Since 2019, David has been employed by the German brand LIGEN.analytics. His responsibilities – in the Analytics Specialist role – include caring for European Clubs in terms of analytics and scouting.

In addition to his football-related history, he has also worked as a translator for the online platform Linguee, many years also gathering experience from his position as an English lecturer and tutor.