If Brad Pitt plays you in a movie, it means that as a character you have something relevant whether you are real or fictional. From a powerful Achilles to soap salesman Tyler Durden to Aldo Raine, the lieutenant who fought the Nazis mercilessly in France, or Billy Beane, the only real one on this entire list, one of the geniuses of modern sports management.
Although his name may not be familiar to you, if you may have seen Pitt playing him in Moneyball, the story of how Beane pioneered the study of data in baseball and made the Oakland Athletics, a competitive team with a meager budget, signing players who did not count for other teams for an adjusted price that made the most of them by knowing their numbers and what they wanted from them. All this wisdom was brought together in this book and subsequently made the leap to the big screen directed by Bennett Miller.
Over the years, Billy Beane worked his way up the A's to become vice president of baseball operations and minority shareholder in the franchise. His work there has drawn a lot of looks and it seems that after decades of working on the team, he might be leaving California.
Fenway Sports Group, the American company that owns the Boston Red Sox of the MLB and Liverpool, wants to take over Beane's services but not for him to go to New England … but to Anfield. According to the Wall Street Journal, this executive who is already the history of American sports would like to undertake a new adventure in football on the Old Continent by helping the English champion. According to this medium, John Henry, owner of Fenway, has already tried to convince him for up to 12 million dollars a year to take his baseball team but received the refusal of Beane. Now, soccer if it could finish closing its stage in Oakland.
Beane, who owns shares in Burnley and also in AZ Alkmaar, to which he is also an advisor, is the man in whom Henry has placed all his trust to revolutionize the transfer market by applying his 'Moneyball' to a world of football less regulated with respect to cost of transfers or salary limits than North American sport. As they explain, Beane is a great football enthusiast, as his investments already show, and he had been studying European football for years. Anfield could welcome a new genius to continue propping up a champion team with methods that come from across the pond.
The Wall Street Journal adds that last Friday he denied having “anything in the back room” and that he only thinks of a preseason that will be a new challenge for the team. Fenway's offer seems to be on the table …