From Cuju to Football 2.0
The world of sports has always balanced on a thin line between evolution and tradition.
Traditional sports are the slowest adopters of new technology. Let’s take football (or soccer for American readers) as an example.
CUJU
When you compare the current gameplay with the earliest form of football the basics have stayed the same. Cuju players could use any part of the body apart from hands and the intent was kicking a leather ball filled with feathers and hair through an opening. Cuju was played in the second and third centuries BC in the Chinese Han Dynasty. If you compare this to the evolution of technology the change since then is negligible.
I has taken decades before the use of technology was accepted in football. It has taken years of debate before goal line technology was introduced in 2013. The first debate on video referees using video replays to help the difficult job of the main referee started in the 70’s and was only accepted in 2016 and first used in the Italian Serie A. Video referees are still not approved in every league, tools that enable communication between coaches on the bench and someone outside are still prohibited.
COMPUTER SAYS ‘NO’
Big data will change football in the near future. Data Analysts are common staff members at top clubs, heck even in Football Manager it is a new department.
Realtime Performance Management are helping trainers take the correct decisions in planning, training loads and individual approaches. Different wearables are already used for injury prevention and a faster return to play. Using them real-time during games is the next step.
In scouting the new Cristiano Ronaldo the data science department will soon be equally important as the gut feeling of scout reports. Big data & machine learning can predict which prospect is better than other players on the shortlist. The Expected Goal Ratio has already found its way to the general public. Pundits and bookmakers are using the stat as a guideline.
Expected Goal Ratio is a percentage chance, on average, of a particular shot going in based on thousands of historical shots and filtering them based on factors such as distance, type of shot, type of pass and the number of defenders between the shooter and the goal.
This is only step 1, the next step is to calculate the Expected Goal Ratio between your current winger and a new striker. If you compare the individual Expected Goal ratio of your new striker with the crossing location and capabilities of your winger it will tell you more than 50 scout reports do. Compiling the best squad for the next game based on medical, historical and performance data will be possible soon.
Of course analytics are only a key in the puzzle. Results in football, after all, can be influenced by luck and randomness. The mental capabilities of a player and fitting in with a team cannot be calculated. But computers can help in not spending millions in a striker who will never fit in the current tactics your team is playing. Just think of many examples where ‘Computer says no’ would have saved your favourite team from loss of face.
TECHNOLOGY IS NOT THE ENEMY
Opponents of technology always used the misconception that technology will change the sport fundamentally. But sports will always be sports but to stay relevant in an era where technology is changing society in a rapid way it has to adopt and not fight it. Some sports are on the verge of being the next Kodak if they don’t accept the next generation of fans have a shorter attention span than a goldfish. Using all kinds of fancy sensors, wearables and data will aid in keeping the fans engaged.
FIFA seem to finally understood and is taking steps to embrace technology. But the road is still very long and the pace FIFA is moving is very very slow. The authorisation process of wearables and technologies is long and frustrating. FIFA is losing a lot of energy on the negatives and instead of focusing on the positives.
“Many wearables are currently simply not good enough for soccer, and the more not particularly convincing offers we get, the more soccer takes a skeptical view of them. The technology industry must respond better to the specific requirements of football.
Wearables designed to be attached to the players’ jerseys, for example, would be problematic as it is customary in soccer to exchange jerseys after the match, or the players sometimes throw their sweaty jerseys to the fans. If one of them was equipped with an integrated device that costs 5,000 dollars, the collection of data could turn out to be a costly exercise.” Nicholas Evans — FIFA
For the sake of the game, get on with it !
