Instead of asking a coach what they want abstractly, you ask them to name 3-5 real players (past or present, anywhere in the world) who exemplify what they need at a position. You then build a statistical profile from those archetype players — finding what they share in the data — and use that profile as the search template for recruitment. The archetype players ground the search in observable reality rather than abstract description.
Process: (1) ask coach to name archetype players for each role they need to fill; (2) pull data for all named archetypes; (3) identify 4-8 metrics where the archetypes cluster significantly above or below average; (4) those metrics become the profile weights. The profile should describe the archetypes well — if it doesn't rank them highly, the metrics are wrong. Not limited to same league or era — a historic archetype is valid as long as the data exists.
"Average center-back" or "average right-back" doesn't exist as a meaningful concept. Within each nominal position, 3-4 distinct archetypes exist with fundamentally different statistical profiles (e.g., progressive ball-playing CB vs. aerial-dominant CB vs. covering sweeper CB). Percentile rankings against "all center-backs" penalize specialists by diluting their elite dimensions with irrelevant comparisons. A ball-playing CB in the 40th percentile for aerial duels isn't bad — they're being measured against aerially-dominant CBs who play a different game.