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Strategy - From the board room to the training ground

Optima Football Consulting is a company helping professional football clubs develop in a sustainable way with strategic planning. Read more about our why.

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We are finishing our club playbook and have implemented a lot of the ideas, Optima Football suggested to us. Even critical people in our club starts to think different now. Thank you for your big inspiration and ideas.

Central European-based club
Club Advisory

Club Advisory

Bringing the club strategy all the way from the offices to the training pitch is a difficult step. The way many football clubs are run today is very unsustainable.

Club advisory

How Hard Can It Be?

How Hard Can It Be?

It is extremely hard to run a football club. Football is complex, relational and brutally competitive on the field. What can you do? A football strategic book to inspire the industry.

Buy the book

Keynote Speaker

Keynote Speaker

The founder of Optima Football, Mads Davidsen, has in the past decade done presentations for companies, clubs, organisations and universities.

Keynote Speaker

Optima Football operates in
Optima Football operates all over the world.

Mads was one of the key factors to our club's growth and success from 2014-2018 from being a small local club to an internationally known club able to win titles - and competing in the Asian Champions League while playing with a majority of home grown players. Mads worked intensively every day on improving our club from the first team to the academy and developed our club strategy 'The SIPG Way' which still is the foundation for our club.

Sui Guiyang, General Manager at Shanghai SIPG F.C. 2014-2018

Our model

Optima Football Sustainable model

Our book

How hard can it be?

How hard can it be?

Most football fans have probably asked themselves this question (How hard can it be?) when they watch their team lose several games in a row, or when the club pays an excessive price for an ageing attacker, or when the club hands in another bleeding annual report.

The answer is that it is extremely hard to run a football club. Football is complex, relational and brutally competitive on the field. And outside the field it is even more complicated. Unfortunately, many decision makers in football are emotionally biased by a range of stressors that challenge their sense of rationale and time.

The logic consequence is that they over estimate in the short run and under-analyze in the long haul. A football strategic book to inspire the industry.

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News and press

In this section you'll find links to selected articles and news about Optima Football.

Reached the top in China Permalink

A story in a large Danish newspaper about winning the championship with Shanghai SIPG and now aiming to help other clubs develop the same way.

Interview with The Financial Times

The 2018-football season in China are ahead of us and this past week, I did an interview with The Financial Times to discuss the current status and future pr...

New posts on the blog

A personal space sharing thoughts, opinions & news from the founder.

How to manage to unmanageable?

Over the recent years, I have been hired by business groups, companies and for different events to do a speech on my 6 years operating in China. Not specific...

The biased game

The DNA of football is to win. Especially in the professional side of the game. The world of football is ‘black or white’; there are winners and losers - not...

To achieve or to avoid?

A common saying is; there are no right or wrong in football. Another saying is: the winner is always right.

Succession planning requires a strategy

After visiting more than 20 top clubs in the past four years and in general developing my own strategy, philosophy & methodology in the past 10 years; I’...

The value of talent

A chapter from my book (in cooperation with Helle Hedegaard Hein) “Når talent forpligter” (Great talent requires great leadership):

Blog: The Chinese Powerhouse

I’ve worked together with the ‘Player Development Project’ for a while and recently they asked me to do a piece on my 4 years working in Chinese football loo...