Investment Team Lessons from the World Cup
What football can teach us about building diverse, adaptable and high-performing investment teams.
The FIFA World Cup comes around only once every four years, making the 2026 iteration an appropriate backdrop for this discussion. While I am only a semi-avid football follower, one aspect of the game has always fascinated me: the best teams are rarely built around the best individuals. They are built around players whose collective performance exceeds what any one of them could achieve alone.
The same principle applies to investment management. Like a successful football team, an investment team relies on individuals with different strengths working together towards a common objective. Goalkeepers, defenders, midfielders and forwards each have distinct roles, yet success depends on how effectively those roles complement one another.Like football, asset management relies heavily on the people who make up the team. Careful consideration must be given to the team composition, with the ultimate objective of generating attractive, sustainable investment returns.
Research into high-performing teams has identified several principles that consistently contribute to better outcomes:
- Leveraging diverse perspectives: Research consistently shows that diverse teams make better decisions. Diversity extends beyond culture and demographics to include differences in education, experience, ways of thinking and professional backgrounds. In investment management, where decisions are made under uncertainty, these varied perspectives help challenge assumptions, reduce bias and improve the quality of debate. A football team made up entirely of left-footed players would have obvious limitations. The same principle applies to investment teams, where diversity of thought is often a competitive advantage.
- Cross-functional collaboration: High-performing investment teams avoid working in siloes. The best ideas are often shaped by insights from different parts of the business. For example, an analyst researching the retail sector benefits from regular input from colleagues specialising in banks, property and logistics, all of which influence the health of retailers. Modern football has evolved in much the same way. Defenders are expected to be comfortable with the ball at their feet, while forwards are required to defend from the front.
- Digital dexterity and AI skills: AI is reshaping almost every industry, and asset management is no exception. While the objective remains unchanged – generating superior risk-adjusted returns – the tools and workflows supporting that objective are evolving rapidly.
At Mazi, we have developed our own AI framework, Mazi GPT (we’ll take credit for the creative genius), which integrates leading AI models such as Claude and Chat GPT into our research process. Its primary role is to help analysts manage the sheer volume of information published every day. Rather than trying to read everything, analysts receive ongoing feedback highlighting the information most relevant to their research areas. This allows them to focus their time and expertise where they can add greatest value. Ultimately, AI enhances our investment process, while the responsibility for analysis and investment decisions remains firmly with our (human) team.
- Retention and succession: Research consistently highlights the importance of dedicating management time to both retaining talent and planning for succession. Appropriate organisational structures help identify, incentivise and retain talent, while allowing them to expand their influence through increased responsibility and institutional knowledge. Succession is a close cousin in this paradigm, requiring strong talent benches and clear career paths to ensure smooth leadership transitions.
Football teams take a similar long-term view. Younger players are often “blooded” alongside experienced teammates, allowing them to develop without disrupting the team’s performance. And if we’re to stretch the analogy, the much-anticipated transfer windows also regularly feature clubs extending the contracts of their best players on improved terms – a deliberate investment in retaining talent.
South Africa’s World Cup journey may be over and our support will inevitably shift to other teams. Whatever our individual preferences, every team still competing at this year’s tournament was carefully assembled, continuously developed and united by a common objective.
At Mazi, we take a similarly deliberate approach to building our investment team. We continuously refine its composition, invest in our people and embrace new ways of working, all with single objective in mind: to field a team capable of delivering consistent investment performance over the long term.
