Prozone Newsletter - Autumn 2010

Highlights: PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS – World Cup 2010 SPOTLIGHT UK – Liverpool FC and Everton FC BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT – Americas PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT – Prozone Online

Newsletter – Autumn 2010

DELIVERING PERFORMANCE INSIGHTS

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FOREWORD The ‘close season’ in European football no longer exists for Prozone with our global business in operation 365 days a year and the next 12 months will see us analyse over 6000 games from a variety of leagues and competitions across the world.

Much has happened since our last issue that has seen us continue to evolve our product and service to meet the needs of our international client base. We continued our analysis of key international tournaments analysing every game throughout this Summer’s World Cup and seeing yet again how Spain’s ‘tika-taka’ style of football, commonly associated with FC Barcelona under manager Pep Guardiola, saw them become only the third nation in the history of the game to hold the title of European and World Champions at the same time.

The 2010/11 season is well underway and a record number of teams have chosen Prozone as their performance analysis provider. In the Premier League Liverpool Football Club are the first of a number of organisations to agree new long-term agreements with Prozone as have Arsenal, Manchester United, Al Ahli and the PGMOL to name just a few. Everton FC have also extended their partnership with Prozone and recently became the first club to take advantage of our new player scouting product; Prozone RECRUITER. Our team continues to grow with the recruitment of Jakub (Kuba) Myszkorowski as our new International Business Development Manager. Kuba will oversee the continued growth into new international markets including overseeing the success of our league-wide analysis service to Poland’s premier football league; the Ekstraklasa.

With so many positive developments, I guess that all that remains is to wish you the very best of luck for the season ahead.

Barry McNeill Managing Director

CONTENTS P2

P3

FOREWORD PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS World Cup 2010

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SPOTLIGHT UK Business Update Liverpool FC Choose Prozone Everton FC Selects Prozone RECRUITER

P6-7

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT – AMERICAS Prozone Sign PlayFE Partnership In South America North America College Soccer

P8-9

REFEREE DEVELOPMENT Howard Webb - 2010 FIFA World Cup Match Official PGMOL Renew Contract With Prozone The PGMOL Annual Conference

P10-12 PRODUCT RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT PROZONE3 / MATCHVIEWER TREND DASHBOARD / PROFILE PORTAL PROZONE ONLINE

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PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS WORLD CUP 2010 For the victorious Spanish team, the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa was a memorable one for many reasons. It was the first time Spain had ever won the tournament, the first time a European nation had ever won a World Cup outside of Europe and they were the first team to win a World Cup after suffering a defeat in their opening game. In doing so they became only the third nation in the history of the game to hold the title of European and World Champions at the same time Having analysed every game from the 2006 World Cup, Euro 2008 and 2010 World Cup, Prozone can offer a unique insight into the style of play that has made the current Spanish team so formidable.

Analysis of Spanish Passing Analysis of Euro 2008 showed Spain as the ‘pass masters’ of the tournament and analysis of their performance at the 2010 World Cup shows they continue to dominate play with the same fluid, passing style. This domination of passing and possession can be seen in the graphic below. The deep red circle that is seen in the centre circle of Spain’s graphic (and missing from the other semi-finalists) indicates that this domination is born out of consistent control of this key area of the pitch.

HEAT MAPS: Passing – Semi-finalists

The graph below shows that Spain consistently had the highest average number of passes throughout both the 2006 and 2010 World Cup tournaments. In fact, their 2010 average of 527 passes per game is almost 200 greater than the tournament average of 343. And when you compare this to their nearest rivals (the semi and quarter finalists) Spain’s average is still significantly higher.

As well as this higher number of passes, Spain’s average success rate is the highest in the tournament at 89%. When you ally Spain’s superior passing with the fact that they were also above the tournament, quarter-finalist and semi-finalist averages for attacking entries and the fact that they also had the highest average number of crosses and penalty area entries, it should come as little surprise that they won the tournament.

KEY: Spain

Passes 2010

Netherlands

Passes 2006 Successful 2010 (%) Successful 2006 (%)

600

When you compare Spain’s passing graphic, and that of other leading central midfielders, with that of Spanish playmaker Xavi Hernandez, you get an idea of the important role he plays for the team and the part he plays in their continued dominance of the centre of the pitch.

HEAT MAPS: Passing – Leading Midfielders

500

90 85

400

80 300

75 70

200

65

Average success ratio (%)

95

Uruguay Average number of passes

Germany

100

60

100

55 0

50 Tournament Avg

Xavi

Spain Avg

SF Avg

QF Avg

Schweinsteiger

Further analysis available online at

prozonesports.com/wc2010 Heat maps and image courtesy of Dean McNamee, Jonathan Richards and Julian Burgess for The Times Iniesta

Sneijder

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SPOTLIGHT – UK

The 2010/11 season is already underway and a record number of teams across all four leagues have chosen Prozone as their performance analysis provider. We currently work with 14 Premier League clubs, 19 Championship clubs, 7 clubs in League One and 2 from League Two. In the Premier League Liverpool have signed a new long-term deal to take the full suite of Prozone services whilst Arsenal, Manchester United and Birmingham City are the most recent clubs to extend their services. Everton have also extended their partnership with Prozone and recently became the first club to take advantage of our new player scouting and benchmarking product; Prozone RECRUITER. With 19 Championship clubs set up to use Prozone in the coming season, we’ve cemented our place as the performance analysis service of choice for English football. Promoted teams Norwich City and Leeds United have both signed long-term agreements whilst Millwall are the latest Prozone customer in the N Power Championship. 7 other clubs including Burnley, Hull City and Derby County have all extended their partnership with Prozone. The Rams

were our first customer back in 1998 when Steve McLaren was assistant to Jim Smith at Pride Park. This new agreement with Derby County sees them become the first club outside of the Premier League to take on the new RECRUITER player-scouting product.

STRENGTH IN DEPTH Our services are not reserved solely for elite clubs with huge resources, and we now work with a growing number of clubs in Leagues One and Two, including latest signing Walsall as well as Charlton Athletic, Huddersfield Town and Hereford United.

“This season we’ll be working with everyone from Champions League challengers through to clubs in League Two. This shows the strength and flexibility of the services that Prozone offer, and we look forward to helping all our teams perform to the very highest standard and push for honours over the coming season.”

Barry McNeill, Managing Director – Prozone

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LIVERPOOL FOOTBALL CLUB CHOOSE PROZONE Prozone are pleased to announce that Liverpool Football Club has just signed a long-term contract to take on our full suite of performance analysis tools that will support the club with their post-match analysis, opposition analysis and player recruitment needs.

Billy Parry, Liverpool Football Analyst, had this to say about the deal, “I first became aware of Prozone in 2005 and I’m impressed with the advances they have made in performance analysis and the way in which their products could enable me to work more effectively intuitively. Now that we’ve signed a long-term deal, I’m really looking forward to working with Prozone in the coming seasons.”

Prozone will deliver full post-match analysis of all 38 of the club’s Premier League games as well as all of their Europa League and domestic cup matches. This will assist the club in all aspects of team and individual performance, and enable them to benefit from the most innovative and insightful performance analysis systems available.

According to Barry McNeill, Prozone’s Managing Director; “We’re delighted to be working with Liverpool Football Club. Their decision to switch to Prozone is testament to the constant development and innovation of our products, our commitment to the very highest levels of customer service and our place as the world’s leading performance analysis provider. The discussions we’ve had with the manager, the medical staff and the club’s senior analysts have been very positive and we look forward to helping Liverpool in the seasons ahead.”

EVERTON FC CHOOSE PROZONE RECRUITER Everton have always been at the forefront of developments in performance analysis. In fact the club use Prozone services at every level of the club from the first and reserve teams all the way through to the youth academy. So it should come as no surprise that they’re the first Premier League club (indeed the first club in the world) to integrate our latest product, Prozone RECRUITER, into their suite of performance analysis solutions.

John Murtough, Everton’s Head of Performance, commented “The depth and objectivity of the player data offered by RECRUITER sits perfectly with Everton’s ethos. We believe in using the very best performance and player analysis tools to enhance every aspect of team, player and club development. Our close working relationship with Prozone allows us to do just that.”

Prozone’s Head of Business Development, Blake Wooster, paid tribute to Everton’s advocacy of performance analysis, saying, “Everton are invariably at the forefront of innovation in this field and once again they’ve proved to be the first movers in integrating our new RECRUITER product. Their long-term commitment is testament to the trust we’ve built with the club over the last decade and also demonstrates the importance of having consistency of data across all analysis being undertaken at the club.”

A unique benefit of Prozone’s RECRUITER is that the profiling and benchmarking of potential player targets will be consistent and integrated with the data that Prozone clubs receive from their current applications.

James Smith, Everton’s Head of Technical Scouting, explains: “This consistency of information allows us to compare and benchmark possible transfer targets using like for like performance data. This ultimately makes the findings from RECRUITER more intuitive, and player recruitment more reliable and efficient.”

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BUSINESS DEVELOPENT AMERICAS

PROZONE AND PLAYFE PARTNERSHIP IN SOUTH AMERICA PlayFE is a Latin American company based in the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires that delivers unique and tailored information services to elite football federations, clubs, leagues and tournaments. PlayFE will be offering a range of Prozone products and services through a unique partnership agreement. This will allow Prozone to offer our world leading MATCHVIEWER and PROZONE3 solutions to football federations and clubs across Latin America.

PlayFE currently work with around 10 clubs in Argentina, as well as the Asociación del Fútbol Argentino (AFA). They also offer consultancy services to clubs and federations across Latin American and over the past three years they’ve developed close working relationships with some of the region’s leading coaches including Antonio Mohamed, Leonardo Astrada, Diego Cocca and Luis Zubeldia.

“PlayFE is proud to bring Prozone’s technology and experience to Latin America. We believe that PlayFE will be able to fulfill the present and future needs of our customers and clubs that are trying to add even more professionalism and development to their teams and organizations.”

Pablo Sarinelli, Sales Director - PlayFE Prozone’s U.S. Business Development Manager Andrew Opatkiewicz added; “Latin America is home to great talent and clubs with impressive football histories, and therefore represents a region of great interest to Prozone. Our partnership with PlayFE will now bring world-class tools and resources to aid the development of federations, leagues and clubs, and market Latin American players throughout the globe.”

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US COLLEGE SOCCER Prozone work with college teams across the U.S and are pleased to announce that the University of Akron have recently signed a deal to use Prozone MATCHVIEWER for both post-match and opposition analysis. Akron are one of the most successful teams in U.S college soccer having completed the 2009 league season without defeat, only to lose the Final on penalties.

The University of Akron join a growing list of successful U.S college teams who have begun using Prozone performance analysis services.

These include Appalachian State University, The University of Louisville, Penn State University, The University of Rochester. The University of West Virginia and both the Men’s and Women’s teams at The University of Washington

Their decision to start using Prozone post-match analysis services sends a signal to the rest of the league and the coaching staff are looking forward to more success and improvements in team performance.

Lesle Gallimore, Women’s Soccer Head Coach at The University of Washington, had this to say; “We’ve been thrilled during our Jared Embick, Associate first two seasons with Prozone, and now with Men’s Soccer Head Coach, had the different upgrades and our increased this to say, “We’re excited to familiarity with the product we feel we are be working with Prozone. We continue to strive to find new ways to help our going to see even bigger benefits using Prozone this coming season. By using Prozone players develop and grow individually and we we are able to educate and improve our team, feel Prozone will help our players do just that. and individual players, as well as our coaching We believe our team preparation and match day performance will be enhanced by Prozone.” staff. Game preparation is more complete after using the Prozone system.”

There are a number of college teams set to sign with Prozone before the start of the next academic year in October and according to Graham Kennedy, Head Coach at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, Canada, are set for a greater level of professionalism and success, “Prozone provides us with cutting edge technology in video match analysis along with player performance evaluation metrics that remove guesswork and subjective opinion. Prozone helps us keep score of what really matters - the individual battles and small games within the game that accumulate to produce overall team success.” within Prozone’s U.S Operations Manager Stewart Mairs added; “Over the past year the number of college and university programs using Prozone has increased exponentially, with the product no longer seen as being reserved for the elite professional club. Teams from all divisions and standings are now gaining a competitive advantage over their opponents, whilst developing their own players through objective performance feedback.”

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REFEREE DEVELOPMENT

“To referee the Final of the 2010 FIFA World Cup was a momentous occasion for my team and I. It was a huge honour to be selected to take charge of such a prestigious game and the sense of pride and achievement we felt when leading the teams out into Soccercity Stadium will live with us forever. But that achievement was only made possible through the support of many people, not least the referee support team at Prozone. ”

“For many years now, Prozone have assisted elite referees, together with referee coaches, to develop their game. The level of detail by which we are able to review and analyse every aspect of our performance ensures that we can make continual improvements through better positioning, movement, body language and player/ game management. In my opinion, Prozone provides the ultimate in support systems to the referee team within the English Professional Game. I know that their commitment to refereeing sees them continually search for ways to develop and enhance their product and I’m delighted that our relationship with Prozone continues to grow as we look to the future.”

Howard Webb - Premier League & UEFA/FIFA International Referee

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PGMOL RENEW CONTRACT WITH PROZONE Prozone have been working with the PGMOL (Professional Game Match Officials Limited) since 2002 and we’re pleased to announce that our partnership will be entering its 9th season after the signing of another long-term contract to provide performance analysis.

The new contract follows the appointment of Mike Riley as General Manager, who has opted to maintain the relationship with Prozone.

This is part of PGMOL’s plans to take refereeing standards to a higher level of professionalism through the use of the most innovative technology.

According to Mike Riley, “I am delighted to have been able to extend the PGMOL’s partnership with Prozone into its 9th season. Since 2002 I have been amazed by the depth of technical information Prozone provides both referees and referee coaches. As General Manager the

access to informative and accurate measures of feedback are crucial to both me and my management team in the development of match officials. Prozone, alongside their team of analysts, have continually serviced us in a professional and reliable manner.”

Over the past 9 years we have built up the largest database of referee data anywhere in the world, including analysis of officials from leagues across Europe and FIFA competitions worldwide. In that time we’ve gone from offering Premier League referees postmatch analysis to becoming the PGMOL’s official partner. We now offer them educational products, live analysis of training sessions, research and development projects, performance benchmarking as well as the organisation of the PGMOL annual conference management.

THE PGMOL ANNUAL CONFERENCE

This year’s PGMOL Annual Conference was organised by Prozone and staged under the motto, “Moving Forward Together”. The conference saw all match officials and assessors from the top five divisions of English football attend two days of lectures and training seminars.

This enabled the PGMOL a unique opportunity to review the season just gone and prepare for the season ahead: educating match officials, sharing experiences, discussing key match incidents and learning from each other.

According to David Allison, PGMOL’s Referee Manager, the annual conference plays an important function for all referees. “The PGMOL Conference is a vital forum where all match officials come together to discuss new law changes, and to debate current trends within the game.

By meeting in small groups, officials can view incidents and exchange

opinions on how to enhance decision making on the field. This is made possible with Prozone’s very professional technical input which ensured that all groups could view analysis from a variety of matches and competitions.”

Read more online at

prozonesports.com/news

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PRODUCT, RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT “We are committed to providing our customers with the most accurate performance analysis information through the application of existing and emerging technologies. To achieve this we invest heavily in our research and product development teams, and work closely with our clients to improve the service we offer.”

Paul Neilson, Head of Business Operations – Prozone

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PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT With so much activity around our new online products; DASHBOARD, PORTAL, PROFILE and now RECRUITER, the extensive, ongoing development work to our core products can sometimes be forgotten!

From new operating systems and technology to changes in how our products are adopted and used, it is important that we can respond to changing needs and adapt and enhance our products appropriately and quickly.

MATCHVIEWER, PROZONE3 and TREND have grown into the most accurate, insightful and interactive performance analysis products in the world and it is important to us at Prozone that this legacy continues to evolve.

So far 2010 has followed the same philosophy, and numerous enhancements have already been made to our core product range - all designed to provide more stable and enhanced performance products for analysts all over the world.

PROZONE3 / MATCHVIEWER TREND Prozone’s original performance analysis products have seen some important software upgrades in 2010 to improve performance.

Coupled with some neat new features, MATCHVIEWER and PROZONE3 continue to stand at the forefront as the complete performance analysis products:

New features include:

The industry’s leading multi-game performance analysis product has been enhanced to enable more effective software upgrades from Prozone, and more detailed and useful cross-game analysis than ever.

New features include:

Faster loading

Refined user interface for more intuitive analysis

Identification of goalkeeper positioning during key opposition plays

Seamlessly import your clips from other Prozone and SportsCode products

More accurate and detailed indication of team tempo during key periods in the game Detailed minute-by-minute sprint information for players

Identify which players are regularly involved in the build-up to a goal down to the 10th assist Identify and analyse key defenders who intercept opposition crosses over multiple games

DASHBOARD / PROFILE Prozone’s online performance analysis products; DASHBOARD and PROFILE are ready for their second year of use amongst football’s elite clubs. More speedy post-match performance and enhanced functionality provide the most accurate online performance analysis in the world.

New features include: Full post-match video Interactive video highlights

PORTAL As one of our most successful product launches ever, the Prozone PORTAL has been widely used across the globe for both post-match and scouting, giving customers the chance to access and download required games online rather than waiting for delivery of DVD footage. With 52% of our analysis being for international customers this development is significant in increasing access to analysis.

Clubs can continue to benefit and download MATCHVIEWER games from our vast game archive and with a host of improvements to functionality and performance, the PORTAL is more powerful than ever.

Club-controlled access Individual player view Quicker post-match performance Links to other Prozone products

New features include: Faster archive updates mean matches are available for post-match analysis

Optimised file preparation for shorter download times

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PRODUCT EVOLUTION PROZONE ONLINE Prozone is set to enhance the way that customers access the latest range of Prozone online products providing a single-sign-on for our suite of web based products (DASHBOARD, PROFILE, PORTAL and RECRUITER) through a secure online solution.

Built on established frameworks, Prozone ONLINE gives customers complete control over the full range of online Prozone performance analysis products within their club. Managers, coaching staff, analysts and players can benefit from access to different combinations of Prozone performance analysis products, and where required – can be granted controlled access to key elements within a specific product using a comprehensive admin system.

This single-sign-on login system will provide a simple entry-point into the range of Prozone online products wherein users’ can move freely between products in multiple languages and even share findings with other staff at the club.

Evolving your analysis: Full administrative control from your club Create logins for access for managers, analysts and players Control access to any combination of Prozone products Single login for all Prozone products Get more out of performance analysis with Prozone online Move between all the online Prozone products Available in multiple languages (coming soon) Linked to established Prozone products Available as addition to existing Prozone contracts

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