Abstract
This article aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the video analysts professionalization process in French professional football. Although their place in the performance quest is now recognized, their daily practices and the complexity of their interactions with the other members of the staff are still poorly documented. Ethnographic immersion and interviews with varied profiles of analysts and coaches highlight how closely the development of this profession is linked to digital innovation. However, the success of analysts should not occult the difficulties they face in their work and the tough drive towards legitimacy in staffs that are subject to results requirements and power struggles. Moreover, relationships with coaches can become problematic, especially when coaches want to keep control of the game analysis. Therefore, to argue that their video analysis expertise is also a game expertise, these neo-professionals coordinate with each other and build trust relationships with key stakeholders. In this context, the emergence of data scientists could liberate analysts from computer tasks in order to bring an assistant role, combining game expertise and data science. These results help to think analyst’s formation and show the pitfalls to avoid in order to be professionally inserted.