When Nick Rappolt arrived in São Paulo for the first time, in November 2023, he had nothing to do with Brazilian football, a sport that now, two and a half years later, has become almost an obsession in his life.
But the businessman doesn’t want to know the results of the games, the lineup of the teams, but rather how to find positions in professional clubs for players who don’t pass through the dark sieves, and end up giving up on their lifelong dream because a team, or a person, doesn’t choose them.
Rappolt has an unlikely, but not impossible, dream: to use artificial intelligence to create jobs, specifically jobs as professional football players for young people who have the talent and determination to face training, discipline and the desire to win, but who, due to one of those things in life, are left out of the scout list or sieves, methods used by clubs to select players and build their squads.
The 50-year-old Brit, with a degree in philosophy and economics, rebelled early against the formal jobs that came his way. “I didn’t want to wear a suit and tie and spend the whole day in an office,” he said in a conversation at Soho House in São Paulo, a private club for people who want to meet people and have a pleasant place to work, exercise, swim, eat well and spend the day.
Soho House was created in London in 1995, with the aim of bringing together people in creative work, such as journalists, people from fashion, cinema, arts and advertising. In addition to London, there are Soho Houses in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Berlin, Istanbul, Mumbai, Mexico City and São Paulo. The São Paulo unit is located within the Cidade Matarazzo complex, next to the Rosewood hotel.
It is at the luxury hotel that the businessman stays in São Paulo, and it is at Soho House that he schedules his work commitments.
Rappolt has an impressive resume and life story. He helped launch Facebook in the UK, worked with technology companies Apple, Google and YouTube. He has already created and sold several companies – the first, at the age of 24, was commercialized three years later and left the entrepreneur financially comfortable for the rest of his life.
In November 2023, at the age of 48 and with 25 years of great professional success, the businessman arrived in São Paulo trying to understand whether it made sense to invest time and money in a football startup created in Brazil.
The startup is Footbao, and its project is audacious: to democratize and expand the reach of players and teams, hostages of traditional scouting systems, which prospect, evaluate and develop players almost always with unclear rules, and to connect athletes and contracting teams, even if they are in other cities or countries.
“There are a lot of good players who get frustrated in the screening processes and end up giving up the sport. And there are teams all over the world looking for these people”, says Rappolt. “Not everyone will be a star player for the national team, but there are teams in Europe and the rest of the planet with a lack of players. Second or third division teams can be a great option for those who don’t qualify for the main teams, but want to have a career in the sport.”
The idea seemed simple, but in practice it turned out to be very difficult. Upon arriving at Footbao, in the interior of São Paulo, Rappolt found an application with many technical flaws, and a market dominated by giants such as TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.
“I gave my diagnosis: the idea is very good, but the current product doesn’t work. The technology isn’t good enough and the business model won’t generate money.” But perhaps because it had so many promises and so many flaws, something in the proposal caught his attention. “It wasn’t just about creating a football social network. What enchanted me was the idea of being able to popularize talent”, says Rappolt.
The sincerity encouraged investors, who doubled their bet. Among them was Boris Collardi, former CEO of Julius Baer bank and investor in different projects linked to sport. He gave a direct answer: “We believe in this and we believe in you. Stay in Brazil and climb this Everest.”
“Competing in this market is extremely difficult. Especially in Brazil, where the use of social networks is enormous. Football is already on TikTok, it’s already on Instagram. And I know these companies, I know that for them to function they need billions of users,” said Rappolt.
The exchange of strong phrases marked the beginning of a radical reconstruction of Footbao — and the attempt to transform Brazil into the main laboratory of this technology applied to football in the world. “This country is the biggest source of sporting talent in the world. If we can establish ourselves here, we can replicate the model anywhere, in any sport”, said the businessman.
Footbao is an app like any other, you download it to your cell phone and have easy and intuitive navigation. On the first page, the invitation is explicit: “Be the next football star”. Okay, advertising sells dreams, we already know. But the app makes it clear how many demands it is currently aware of (there were 38, in 10 different clubs, at the time of writing this edition).
Players, boys or girls, with no age limit, create their profiles as athletes and post scenes with their moves as is done on Instagram, and the AI analyzes everything it can analyze. Things like speed on the field, ability to anticipate movements, reflexes, game technique. “The emotional part of each player, the AI is unable to analyze. And thankfully, this leaves a margin of humanity in the process.
The algorithm then does what it knows how to do: starts showing his plays, generating visualization, interactions, and so the athlete can attract the attention of teams and analysts looking for specific talents. Clubs also publish their demands, such as “looking for under-17 left back” or “analyzing fast striker”. Interested parties then apply by sending their profile. If it matches, anything can happen.
So far, eight players have been signed through the app, including Léo Veiga, a midfielder recently placed at Italian team Spezia Calcio, and defender Glória Gasparini, 18, who joined Corinthians. Italian team US Lecce also selected players through Footbao for a trial in Europe, which is ongoing.
The app already has more than 500 thousand downloads, more than 120 thousand registered athletes and 40 partner teams, including Santos. There are also partner clubs in Uruguay, Colombia, Argentina and Italy.
“Technology will change football like it changed banks”, believes the CEO.
com DIEGO ALEJANDRO, JULLIA GOUVEIA and KARINA MATIAS
