Arsene Wenger is set to return to former club Arsenal to poach their data and analytics guru and bring him on board at FIFA.

Jaeson Rosenfeld has led Arsenal’s internal analytics company for the past decade and was involved in the search to replace Wenger when he left the Gunners after 22 years in 2018, as well as the process not to offer Unai Emery a new contract last summer.

But his responsibilities have diminished in recent months during the restructuring of the Arsenal hierarchy and now Wenger wants to take advantage of that and bring him to FIFA.

According to The Athletic, Wenger, who is now head of global football development at world football’s governing body, wants to develop the use of analytics in the game in a bid to ‘level the playing field between bigger and small national federations’.

Wenger and Rosenfeld will also ‘look at how analytics can be used as part of a global coaching curriculum’.

Arsenal began working with Rosenfeld’s company StatDNA in 2011 and eventually bought the company for just over £2million in 2012, it is claimed.

Wenger is said to have ‘embraced Rosenfeld’s data-led approach’ during his tenure as manager and his company played a key role in a number of transfers over the years.

During their first meeting, StatDNA also presented Wenger with some information on previous Arsenal signings that had not been successful in a bid to show them how to avoid making the same mistakes. Marouane Chamakh was allegedly one of those.

StatDNA’s software also allowed Wenger to analyse games all over the world and helped him scout future opposition. He could also use the data to tailor his players’ training programmes in a bid to avoid injury.

Despite being based in Chicago, Rosenfeld would spend a lot of time at Arsenal’s London Colney training base during the transfer window.

StatDNA was renamed as Arsenal Data Analytics last year. It will remain part of Arsenal but Rosenfeld will no longer be involved.