Leading the line November 2013

leading the line bringing you all the latest news from scout

November 2013

Destination Brazil!

KNVB explain how online planning tools assisted with the management of their 2014 World Cup qualification campaign

also inside The Scout7 Video Evolution New analysis applications launched this autumn Tournament Reviews A round-up of close season partner competitions The Numbers Game How analytics can enhance recruitment decision-making

MD’s Column W

new Intelligent application.

The summer of 2013 has seen considerable investment in Scout7’s technical infrastructure, which has included a complete overhaul of Xeatre’s hardware platforms in Munich to facilitate the arrival of High Definition (HD) match footage across our range of video platforms.

The Netherlands were also one of the first European sides to qualify for next summer’s World Cup, and within this feature they offer us an insight into how the framework assisted them with their monitoring of senior players, together with preparations for each of their qualification opponents.

This work culminated in over 200 matches across the ‘big 5’ European leagues being delivered to clients in HD during August and September, including every game played in the English Premier League and German 1.Bundesliga, something which we will continue to deliver throughout the 2013/14 season.

We are also pleased to include a couple of features which highlight how analytics are changing the way clubs monitor key recruitment markets. Together with David Sally, Chris Anderson has published a book this summer titled ‘The Numbers Game’. He has spoken to us about how clubs can potentially structure its recruitment to embrace new approaches and skills that can further enhance the recruitment process.

elcome to the latest edition of our Leading the Line magazine.

We have also been pleased to appoint Jason Withe to our Business Development team, who will be developing our business across Asia.

Jason has substantial experience of football in the region, including spells as the assistant coach of the senior national teams of Thailand and Indonesia.

To support Jason and our existing clients we will be extending our data capture across the continent, including the publication of domestic league information from a number of East Asian countries in our application databases for the first time, together with extended video coverage from the same competitions.

A full interview with Jason can be found on page 28.

Elsewhere in this edition, we are delighted to lead with a feature on the Dutch Federation, the KNVB, who are the very first national association to implement our groundbreaking

Sports

Managing Director Lee Jamison Operations Director Bradford Griffiths Sales Director Stephan Hanke Company Secretary Anthea Tape Product Management Team Nick Bradshaw Jack Dodd

Business Development Team Simon Davison - UK, Netherlands, USA Jonathan Howard - UK Kevin Russell - UK (Scout7 Consulting) Jerome Lebatard - France Pierre Michaud - France Michel Pineda - Spain Nacho Gonzalez - Spain Mads Jørgensen - Scandinavia John Galas - USA Jason Withe - Asia

Finally I would also like to bring to your attention a series of Podcasts which we will be making available throughout the autumn. In them we will be debating several subjects relating to scouting and recruitment with a distinguished list of industry professionals, including Alex McLeish and Damien Comolli.

Each episode will be available to download for free via iTunes and the Scout7 website.

In the meantime I hope you enjoy reading this edition.

Scout7 Managing Director

Development Team Iain Plimmer Neil Mountford Bhupinder Sera Joe Perry Information Team Jonty Keeley Mike Philpotts

Project Managers Andy Cooper Dean Margetts

Database Team Daniel Szmid Bartek Sarzynski Marshall Gillespie Martin Harris

Marketing Assistant Jenny Platts

Contracts Manager Emma Field

3 PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL SOLUTIONS

(iSF)

To compliment that, we also have a profile on Leicester City’s Head of Technical Scouting Rob Mackenzie, who outlines his role in recruitment and match preparation at the club.

The Scout7 Team Chairman Mark Ansell

Framework

How has the Player Recruitment Process evolved since the Turn of the Century?

The correlation between Finances, Resources and a Club’s Recruitment Strategy Planning for the January Transfer Window How will Recruitment Change in the Future?

the

podcast series Available to listen and download now at

News & Feature Contents © KNVB.nl

iSF Platform assisting KNVB ahead of Brazil 2014........................... 6 The Dutch Federation have elected to incorporate Scout7’s Intelligent Sports Framework (iSF) into the organisation, to assist with the management of key day-to-day operations and workflows around the senior national team.

The Scout7 Video Evolution.......................................................... 10 Following on from the launch of the iSF earlier this year, Scout7 have been heavily involved in the launch of not one, but two brand new video platforms, both of which are now available to clubs in a variety of different specifications.

The Currency of Numbers in Football.............................................14 Chris Anderson, co-author of ‘The Numbers Game’, has spoken to Leading the Line about how clubs can potentially structure its recruitment to embrace new approaches and skills that can further enhance the recruitment process, including the application of analytics to assist a club in making key decisions when signing a player.

Brazil Emerge Victorious at 2013 Festival Espoirs de Toulon............18 Brazil cemented their place as the most successful overseas nation in the forty-one year history of the Scout7-supported Toulon Festival by defeating Colombia in this year’s Final.

Optimising Data Interrogation........................................................ 20 Scout7’s development team have recently introduced two recruitment-based widgets onto the iSF platform, which are designed to enhance a club’s data collection on player prospects in addition to allowing the interrogation of general player information in greater depth.

SPAX Cup 2013 Review............................................................... 21 The Brazilian side Botafogo bounced back from their defeat in the final of the 2013 FIFA Blue Stars Youth Cup to successfully defend their Spax Cup title. Scout7 were in attendance as the drama unfolded.

The Profile: Rob Mackenzie.......................................................... 22 A Q&A with the Leicester City Head of Technical Scouting.

2013 Summer FIFPro Tournaments.............................................. 26 During the close season Scout7 supported two tournaments organised by FIFPro, which featured teams from eleven countries made up of disengaged players representing their respective national player unions.

Scout7 Profile: Jason Withe......................................................... 28 An introduction to Scout7’s Asian Business Development Manager.

Editorial & Acknowledgments Editor Andy Cooper Editoral Assistant Jenny Platts Image Credits KNVB.nl Magali Ruffato Stephan Kirsch Plumb Images Stéphane Saint-Raymond

Scout7 Contact Details Head Office Faraday Wharf Birmingham Science Park Aston Holt Street, Birmingham, B7 4BB Telephone UK: 0844 568 5770 Int: 0044 845 386 5770 Fax +44 (0)870 043 4629 Email info@scout7.com

5

iSF Platform Assisting KNVB Manage its Preparations for Brazil 2014

W

ith the group stages of the UEFA World Cup qualification campaign now complete, nine European nations can start their planning for Brazil 2014 safe in the knowledge that they have already earned their place at next summer’s finals.

For most teams this planning will start with two friendlies during the next round of autumn internationals later on this month.

One of the nations in this position are the Netherlands, who were one of the first teams on the continent to secure their finals place, with two qualifiers still to play. They finished UEFA group D unbeaten, nine points ahead of their nearest rivals Romania.

They will now play home friendlies against Japan and Colombia in Genk and Amsterdam on the 16th and 19th of November respectively.

Following the appointment of Louis van Gaal as Head Coach for a second time following Euro 2012, the KNVB, who are one of the most advanced and admired organisations in professional football, have been taking steps to enhance the way they monitor national team players, based both at home and abroad, through establishing a comprehensive archive of player and team information for the coaching and support staff to reference throughout the domestic season.

To assist with this objective, the Federation have elected to incorporate Scout7’s Intelligent

Sports Framework (iSF) into the organisation, to assist with the management of key dayto-day operations and workflows around the senior national team.

Performance Analyst Max Reckers, who evaluated several tools on the market following his appointment before recommending Scout7 to the KNVB.

Launched earlier this year, the iSF has been developed to facilitate the management of any type of information managed privately across the football club or national federation, including reports, match event data, player tracking, squad management, video analysis and all administration information managed by office-based staff.

He explains why he felt it necessary to introduce the scouting and analysis tools into the daily working practices of the national team.

Within the iSF, KNVB staff have the opportunity to watch, assess and edit match footage of every player on the radar of the Head Coach, as well as analyse recent performances of upcoming opponents.

The framework also enables the support team of scouts, analysts, coordinators and administrators to enter regular reports on each player, using a personalised customised template, and monitor the activity of both the established international players and the emerging players progressing towards a first senior call-up.

The decision to incorporate the technology came shortly after the appointment of van Gaal, after several members of his support staff highlighted its benefits during their time working at domestic clubs.

One such advocate of the technology was

6

“Currently we have national team players operating in about seven or eight different leagues around Europe,” says Reckers.

“We are also in a phase where we are selecting a lot of new players, scouting for new talent and initially we were searching for a platform which could provide us with all the videos for all the players and that could provide us with a database where we could log the performances of the players.

“It had to be a platform which was really flexible in adapting our new innovative way of managing data for the scouting process and in the iSF I think we’ve found that platform.”

With sixteen different users entering information into the KNVB framework on a daily basis, new information is constantly being fed back into the Head Coach relating to the recent performances of all players.

The application incorporates several shortlists and recommended lists, where new players are plotted into a formation display to highlight players performing consistently at a high level

that may warrant a future call-up to the squad.

Within the same area the staff can also access quick links to all recent reports for all of the players listed, and can also see at a glance the total number of minutes a player has completed for their club at the weekend.

The module plays a key role at a recurring meeting of all the key members of staff, as Reckers explains: “There are two important days every week for us, the Monday and the Tuesday.

“Every Monday all the scouts come together and we organise all the feedback that needs to go the national team coach. That includes for example all the information about who played, who was brought on and taken off and a selection of video clips.

“All the player reports from the weekend are also submitted that day and then the summary goes to the national coach for a meeting on Tuesday.

“That meeting involves the technical staff, who sit with the Scout7 platform open and go through our recommended squad step-by-step to see if there are any changes and if there are any new players that have been added to be considered for selection.”

© KNVB.nl

After a period of familiarising themselves with the functionality, the iSF has now been fully operational at the KNVB for approaching a

year and in addition to managing the dozens of performance-based reports coming in each week, the framework is also playing a key role in the coordination of the network through calendar based-widgets, including a scouting planner and various fixture calendars.

The Federation has also exploited the framework’s capacity to incorporate integrated data from other providers by electing to receive its Opta match event data through one of the iSF’s video platforms, VideoHub. The VideoHub platform allows their team of analysts to search for various events across Opta’s database, involving a specific team or player, across several domestic seasons and either watch them immediately through the video player, or to create playlists which can be saved to an individual player record and referred back to at a later date.

For Reckers, this has been the iSF’s single biggest benefit to the operation so far.

He says: “The biggest thing for us is having a web-based platform, with the scouting database combined with videos incorporating the Opta event data.

“For us it’s really important to be able to quickly find instances of players in the match.

“With the Opta and video combination we have that link, so that means we are able to search through, for example, all the passes or all the key passes, or any highlighted moment which

is directly linked through the video. That means that scouts possessing little video knowledge can just drag events they want to merge together to make video highlights of the player.”

Although the initial implementation of the iSF has been focused on getting the senior team operation fully integrated, the longerterm objective of the KNVB is to get all of the national age groups fully up-and running on the application, so that all information at every level of Dutch football is stored within a single central source.

The first steps in this project occurred this summer, when Reckers introduced the senior operartion’s workflow to the U21 staff during the team’s run to the semi-finals at the European Championships.

They are also planning on getting all fixtures, results and line-up information for domestic youth leagues incorporated into the iSFintegrated ProScout7 database, which will enable them to monitor the weekly performance of youth team players at their domestic teams throughout the season.

The current ProScout7 database covers the Jong Oranje and A1 divisions.

“We are waiting to be ready to upload all the match data, including information from the nonprofessional leagues,” outlines Reckers.

Continued on page 8, column 1

© KNVB.nl

“Of course our first objective was to set up the senior team, so from there we set the example and then we will move it downwards.

just as important to the long-term development of the next generation of Dutch internationals, so that all performance information can be archived from the moment they are initially called up to one of the various age groups, through to when they may one day wear the orange shirt for the full senior side.

“We have implemented the same scouting processes in place for the national team with the U21 team, which means the U21 coaches are also actively using the system and giving all the feedback about the players and upcoming talent for the senior squad.”

Looking ahead to the future, Reckers is hopeful that once the foundations are laid with player and match information being accessible at all levels of Dutch football, that the Federation will be in a position to integrate video footage from these leagues, which will allow them to take their player analysis to a new level across all the national teams.

Whilst the short-term objectives of the senior side are fully focused on next year’s World Cup, the Federation are acknowledging that projects such as the implementation of the iSF are also

“This is an important time for the KNVB to make the next step in aligning processes within the Scout7 platform. This means we are now working on a process for getting all the videos

“Currently we have national team players operating in about seven or eight different leagues around Europe.

“We are also in a phase where we are selecting a lot of new players, scouting for new talent and initially we were searching for a platform which could provide us with all the videos for all the players and that could provide us with a database where we could log the performances of the players.

“In the iSF I think we have found that platform.”

Max Reckers, KNVB Performance Analyst 8

in there for the professional leagues and even the non-professional leagues. The same goes for all the match data, so we have all the player data for all the leagues.

“I think it’s really important to have one big platform where we have video, data and subjective player reports in there.

“That gives us the ultimate combination for the scouting process.”

Whilst van Gaal and his squad will be looking to go one better from 2010 and lift the World Cup trophy for the first time, the KNVB will be hoping that its investment in its management infrastructure will guarantee that their knowledge and intelligence of players will ensure each team is fully prepared for challenging for major honours at all levels of international football for many years to come.

© KNVB.nl

“This will mean that we will have a full database for every scout working within the KNVB, no matter whether they are working with the Under 15 squad or the senior squad. We want all players and match data to be in there.

The iSF – The Opposition Assessor’s Perspective Edward Metgod

T

he KNVB have a team of scouts who compiled comprehensive opposition assessments on each of their UEFA Group D opponents throughout the World Cup qualification campaign.

One of these assessors is the former international goalkeeper Edward Metgod, who has been using the iSF to submit his reports to Louis van Gaal and his technical staff.

Here he explains how he used the player information and video footage stored on the KNVB iSF system to prepare for each of his scouting assessments during the last international break.

“We always do a minimum of three live reports on each of our opponents and we plan things so I always see the last game of our opponent”, says Metgod.

“During the last round of international games I travelled to Turkey on the Thursday evening ahead of doing a report on the Turkey vs Andorra game the following day.

“There are also certain things you can pick up on video from games you haven’t seen.

Depending on the state of the game, you may see the pattern of play change, such as if the team goes one nil ahead or one nil down, and as part of that they may elect to make substitutions, so you can see which players come on and establish how they fit into the team.

“If these scenarios didn’t occur in any of the games you saw live, you would not be aware of them, so there are a lot of things you can pick up.”

Following the game, Metgod completed a full scouting report on Andorra, together with a video report focusing on their strengths and weaknesses, patterns of play and set pieces.

These reports were completed following the game and stored online, which enabled the technical staff, who were in Tallinn following the game with Estonia, to pick up and plan for the Andorra match a few days later.

Now that their qualification has been secured, the KNVB have to wait until December for the draw for the finals to find out who their

opponents will be in Brazil.

However as soon as these have been determined, Metgod will be immediately start referencing the video archive to begin work on their first opponents of the summer.

“The video archive, and particularly the match events search engine, gives us the opportunity of assessing all the key events in a game, which is a good starting point for the analysis” he says.

“As we have the Opta data, we can search for all of the offensive actions, all the defensive actions, all of the penalty kicks and so on, which is so important for preparing for games.

“It means that we cannot be surprised anymore by how a team sets-up and plays against us, because we should know everything about them before our players step onto the pitch.”

© KNVB.nl

“On the Friday morning I logged onto the platform, where I did all my preparation ahead of the game. Although as a group we had seen both Turkey and Andorra several times, there are games that both countries have played which I didn’t see live in the stadium, so I could look back in the database to see the previous

selections and the starting formations, before watching the games on video, which offered me extra information to back-up my earlier judgments.

From left to right: Nigel De Jong, Jeremain Lens, Kevin Strootman and Ron Vlaar celebrate during the 8-1 victory over Hungary last month

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The Scout7 Video Evolution

Coverage Extension Accompanied by Launch of New Analysis Platforms

ince introducing the first incarnation of the Scout7Xeatre video scouting and analysis application in 2009, Scout7 has led the way in delivering pioneering multiplatform video solutions to the football industry.

S

Amongst many innovations, during the last four years Scout7 were the first to introduce online editing tools into a video database, as well as being the first to live-stream legitimate subscription-based matches played anywhere in the world.

Scout7 were also the first to devise a platform that allowed video to be integrated into a private scouting and report management database, bringing together all written scouting reports and video into one secure online environment.

In the weeks leading up to the start of the 2013/14 season, further steps were taken by the company to not only increase the level and quality of coverage, but also to facilitate the delivery of brand new platforms offering new

functionality and features, to assist various different staff operating in the recruitment and performance departments.

Following a major investment in technical infrastructure, which included a complete overhaul of Xeatre’s hardware platforms in Munich, clubs using Scout7 video platforms are receiving footage of every game played in the English Premier League and German 1.Bundesliga this season in High Definition (HD).

These games are also available to download in HD for remote viewing.

In addition to that, over 150 matches across the rest of the ‘big 5’ European leagues were also delivered to clients in HD during August and September.

Plans are in place to introduce more HD channels into the Xeatre recording schedule in the coming months, which will mean even more games will be delivered in this format as the

season progresses.

In total over 22,000 full games, in various formats, have been collected by Xeatre since the start of 2013, almost twice as many games compared to the same point last year.

More significantly, following on from the launch of the Scout7 Intelligent Sports Framework (iSF) earlier this year, Scout7 have been heavily involved in the launch of not one, but two brand new video platforms, both of which are now available to clubs in a variety of different specifications.

Both platforms sit on the iSF framework via a versatile HTML5 interface, which means they are fully compatible with a PC, iMac or tablet.

They are both seen as natural successors to the original Scout7Xeatre platform, but incorporate different functionality, giving clubs the opportunity to choose a solution which is the most appropriate to their needs based on budget, resources and staff expertise.

Online Streaming of a game through the iSF Fixture Calendar Widget, using the Scout7.tv Platform

10 PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL SOLUTIONS

The first of these two new applications is Scout7.tv, which provides club scouts with easy-to-use functionality that allows them to use video content to back up key points they make in a player or team assessment.

Event filtering for Kurt Zouma for viewing in Scout7.tv Pro & Scout7.tv Elite

Scout7.tv & Scout7.tv Live

for scouting events against players, teams or fixtures.

As a starting point, Scout7.tv allows a user to watch any full game that is stored within the Scout7Xeatre match database, which can be watched online or downloaded.

This means that clubs can filter a search based on whether they wish to view specific actions for an individual player or team; and choose the specific events which they wish to view.

Then if the club has subscribed to the iSF customised report template widget, users of Scout7.tv will also be able to edit video from any game they are compiling an assessment for, to create clips which can then be attached to their written report and stored within the iSF’s online filing cabinet.

The event criteria includes all goals, bookings and dismissals taken from Scout7’s data centre and match events taken from OptaPro’s scouting dataset.

The editing facility comprises of a simple start and stop button, which acts as the in and out points for a clip to be created and stored within a report.

As an optional extra, users of Scout7.tv can also subscribe to Scout7.tv live, which grants its staff access to live streams of matches taking place all over the world.

Scout7.tv Pro For clubs which require more than just a basic video editor, Scout7.tv Pro offers additional functionality which enables the club to access key match event information.

At the heart of Scout7.tv Pro is an Event Finder widget, which allows a club to search

Once all criteria have been selected, the club user can watch a continuous playback of all the clips selected within the Scout7.tv player.

In addition to searching and filtering events, Scout7.tv Pro also incorporates functionality which allows users to share scouting clips with colleagues via email, in addition to linking clips to central player and team records.

To ease the identification of players within a clip, in future a user will also be able to utilise a tool which allows them to circle the player at the start of a clip before saving and archiving.

Scout7.tv Elite The top specification of Scout7.tv allows the club to take their interrogation of match event information to another level.

Scout7.tv

Elite

provides

clubs

11 PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL SOLUTIONS

with

the

opportunity to subscribe to OptaPro’s full dataset, then once events are populated into their iSF framework, club staff can group various different types of event data into clubspecific formats for bespoke analysis.

This means that a user can take a variety of different events and link them to a single searchable criteria.

Then using the Event Finder widget, they will be able to conduct searches involving a player or team and results will incorporate all the Opta events associated to the selected criteria.

This means clubs can create their own searches that are specific to position, utilising the events which they consider the most relevant.

Significantly, all grouped event criteria are userspecific rather than club-specific, which means that individual users can define and customise their own preferred criteria based on their own role at the club.

So for example a specialist coach, such as a goalkeeper coach, can set up event criteria which are specific to goalkeepers and these will be unique to their own iSF login.

As a consequence, club staff across various departments can use these tools to further optimise their own personal analysis processes on a daily basis.

Turn to page 12 to find out about the second brand new analysis platform, VideoHub Elite

D

eveloped in conjunction with OptaPro, VideoHub Elite is a comprehensive video application which brings together all pre-existing functionality from the Scout7Xeatre and VideoScout platforms, in addition to new functionality devised by both Scout7 and OptaPro. It is the first ever multi-match scouting product for professional clubs which presents video indexed with OptaPro’s most detailed dataset.

As with the iSF, VideoHub Elite utilises a widget-based interface which allows the user to customise its own dashboard to create preferred workflows for viewing, editing and analysis.

The package is the most comprehensive available, incorporating various widgets and animations that directly link, to not only the footage, but to searches made by the user when interrogating detailed event data supplied

by OptaPro. With the full dataset available, the application search can return over 100,000 events involving a team or player in less than a second, from matches played across over 30 leagues and 80 competitions that OptaPro currently cover.

ADVANCED ANALYSIS TOOLS The widgets available to a user centre around a core Pitch Widget, which displays all events meeting a specific search criteria within a pitch diagram. Events can then be viewed

individually in the VideoHub player by clicking on specific events on the pitch display.

The Opta Heat Map is also linked to the search, which highlights the areas on the pitch where the events took place.

When studying passes, further filtering from search results can be conducted by using an Angle Widget, which allows an analyst to stipulate the specific angle or length of a pass that they wish to appear on the pitch widget display.

If a user also wants to analyse goal attempts or goals scored and conceded in greater detail, a Goalmouth Widget highlights exactly where an individual attempt finished up within the goalmouth.

Finally, a flexible Timeline enables the user to view only events that took place in a specific time period during a game.

12

PLAYLISTS VideoHub Elite incorporates brand new playlist functionality which allows the club to build its own folder-structured archive of playlists, made up of edited video clips and filtered match event sequences created by analysts in-house.

The analysts can create an unlimited number of different playlists and add clips to them by editing footage from any game stored within the video archive.

Playlists can be shared internally by club staff and can also be downloaded for remote viewing. They can also be exported to player and team records on the iSF. More information on both Scout7.tv and VideoHub is available by contacting Scout7’s sales team at sales@scout7.com

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Sports Tech Innovation Summit 6th & 7th November 2013 Emirates Stadium, London *Delegate Passes still Available* Speakers Include:

+44 (208) 123 3972 rshanley@theiegroup.com theinnovationenterprise.com/summits

ie.

The Currency of Numbers in Football The Role of Data in the Evolution of Player Recruitment

By Andy Cooper

ince the dawn of the first professional domestic league competition 125 years ago, it has been widely acknowledged that good player recruitment is a vital element, if not the single most important factor, in a club securing long-term on-field success.

S

But like the game itself, the business of player recruitment has evolved since that inaugural Football League campaign, throughout the generations and into the present day, as finance, sporting regulations, competition, employment rules and social demographics have impacted on how a scouting operation can operate, as have the parameters to what type of player a club can feasibly recruit.

Now well into the 21st Century, it would appear that this evolution has accelerated rapidly in the current digital age.

If you look into a leading European club today, you will find that they employ a blend of traditional scouts, technical scouts and performance analysts, who have all been embracing a wide variety of new information sources and technologies that are now available at their disposal.

Indeed in a world where detailed match information is available at your fingertips from the latest mobile app, it is hard to believe that as little as 18 years ago, when the Bosman ruling was revolutionising the way the transfer market operated, many clubs were still relying on hand-written reports posted from its scouts and standalone recommendations from agents to manage its operation.

In contrast, in today’s world a professional club will look at every source of information that is available to them in order to enhance its decision making, which in itself is a process which can stretch back many years to the moment when a player was first initially on the scouting department’s radar, to the moment they were considered ready to be recruited.

Several aspects of this evolution have been

documented in a new book which was published earlier this summer, titled ‘The Numbers Game’, authored by Chris Anderson and David Sally.

Anderson is a former semi-professional player and now a professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York and is widely considered to be a pioneer in sports analytics, whereas Sally is a former baseball pitcher who now works as a behavioural economist and consultant, as well as being a visiting professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

Whilst writing the book they visited professional clubs around a world to attain a first-hand insight into how elite clubs operate with its match preparation, analysis and recruitment.

Subsequently they have put together a series of arguments, which amongst many things consider the importance of luck, the value of a prolific striker and the challenges of how the performance of a team’s defence can be valued to measure defensive performance.

More significantly, despite the book’s title hinting at a focus on quantitative soccer analytics, ‘The Numbers Game’ has been written in the context of football as a sport, and an unpredictable one at that.

It is not a book about revolution, but one that is more about natural evolution and how practices can be implemented to improve decisions to support a Manager and a Club. It is also very pragmatic about the impact of money, or indeed the lack of it, and the correlation between resources and success.

It also exposes a number of myths – notably how data-driven analysis is not a new phenomenon to hit the professional game. Instead, the difference in how this data is used today lies in how a club understands and applies the numbers as part of its wider analysis.

Following its publication, Anderson has spoken to Leading the Line about how clubs can potentially structure its recruitment to embrace

14 PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL SOLUTIONS

new approaches and skills that can further enhance the recruitment process, including the application of analytics to assist a club in making key decisions when signing a player.

In the first instance, he believes that if a recruitment department is going to embrace analytics they need to fully understand the value it brings to the process, and then utilise it in the correct way.

“As the industry has evolved I think the job description of the Head of Recruitment has evolved, and I think that is true of Managers as well,” says Anderson.

“With new tools and with new technologies coming online, Heads of Recruitment need to find a way to take them on board. That does not mean that they have to become analysts or become technologically advanced with a PHD in maths, but I think what it does mean is that they have to skill up a little bit to understand how these new technologies and new types of information can help create value for the club.

“What is important as part of that is not just simply to have an understanding of what those tools are, but to find a way to hire the right kinds of people into a scouting department that have the ability to then make use of those tools in a very effective way.

“There is nothing worse than spending a lot of money on tools that are going to sit around unused and I think that still happens too much, in part because there are established work routines that clubs have and a new toy often sits in the corner because it has not been fully integrated into the decision making process.

“So I think Heads of Recruitment need to understand both the hardware and the software, and by software I mean the human capital, the people involved in using new tools to make then fully functional and effective.”

Since the mid-1990’s, several data companies have been collating various types of information

captured from leagues around the world, ranging from physical performance data through to detailed match events.

The availability of this information can aid a club with its analysis of a player, however with such a broad dataset, how easy is it for a club scout or analyst to contextualise events and separate the meaningful data from the ‘noise’?

Again, Anderson believes that the key lies in the recruitment of the right people within the club to evaluate the information intelligently.

“Data analysis requires patience, trial and error and very importantly, it requires hiring the right kinds of people, who are able to employ that information in meaningful ways,” he explains.

“What I mean by that is you need people who have both the knowledge about football as a game and who understand how football clubs work internally, but they also have to have the technical and analytical skills to make sense of the information.

“You want to ask good questions about the data and you can’t ask good questions about the quantitative information unless you understand the game and understand what the club’s needs are and what the club’s limitations or aspirations are.

“So ultimately it has to be driven by one single question – how do we win football games? That has to be the driving analytical question behind all of it. You can split that up into any number of smaller parts – how do we produce goals? How do we not concede them? How do we produce better and more quality shots and so on.

“We can split that up but ultimately there has to be a question that underlies any kind of analysis and that question has to be ‘how to win?’ and you need the right people in place to do that.”

Despite all the match information available, one area of the game which is difficult to quantify based solely on data is defensive performance.

How can attributes such as positional intelligence be measured in a way that tackles, blocks and interceptions can?

In a game dominated by turnovers, exploiting weaknesses and punishing individual mistakes, being able to identify outstanding defenders has always been a cornerstone in building a great side. So moving forward, how will data be applied to support the assessments made by a scout sitting in the stand?

I think the value of good defence or a good defender comes out when we understand things like positioning and coordination among a set of players, among the back four, a goalkeeper or centre backs or whatever we are thinking about.

“Positional data will help us with that but I think we’re far from a point where that can become a standard tool for clubs, I don’t think that will happen for a few more years.”

Another trend that has appeared in recent years has been the ranking of players and teams, based on results and individual player performance.

UEFA has its own club coefficient rankings for each season based on past Champions League and Europa League performance, whilst the London-based consultancy company Decision Technology have developed various performance models that power, amongst other things, the Castrol Player Rankings.

A now-defunct website called Eurofootsie also tried to establish a team ranking model for European teams, based on each club’s previous 50 results and current form.

Whilst the make-up of any ranking model is open to individual opinion as to whether or not they capture the essential performance indicators required to provide an accurate reflection of a club or player in the world order, can models, whether devised internally or available within the public domain, offer a viable tool to assist a club with the focusing of its recruitment?

Whilst Anderson thinks that some degree of benchmarking is important when evaluating key recruitment markets, he feels that clubs should also adopt a degree of caution when placing a value on a ranking mechanism.

“It is a really interesting and challenging analytical question and it has to do with separating out the value and the contribution of a player to the team and the team affects overall,” he explains.

“Strikers will look better on good teams, as they will get more chances and they will have their team mates contribute to their ability to take high-quality shots, so separating out the unique

contribution of the player from the team’s strengths or weaknesses is a hard one.

“Think about the Dutch league for instance.

It is a league that is relatively high scoring, so strikers almost inevitably look good, but it doesn’t mean that Dutch strikers are particularly good necessarily.

“So we have to be very careful making sure that what we see isn’t a function of the quality of the league or the nature of the league or the quality of the team that’s someone’s playing for.

“So to cut a long story short, I think any effort you can make to go down the path of benchmarking, measuring and comparing along those lines is a very important thing, whilst still keeping in mind that it’s fraught with potentially faulty conclusions.”

A key requisite of any recruitment department is managing the constant turnover of players within the club’s playing squad.

Clubs now have information at their disposal which allows them to identify key recruitment trends and mobility rates over a medium-tolong term period around major leagues in world football, offering context if a club elects to structure its recruitment in cycles or put a greater emphasis on ensuring that they extract the peak performance of an individual player during their time at the club.

Based on his observations, Anderson is in little doubt that intelligent recruitment departments are already addressing these key objectives and that moving forward, we will see players being given big contracts before they hit their peak, rather than at the point where they have reached their ultimate performance.

“I think managing what you would call the life cycle of a player has to be part of any good recruitment department’s remit,” he says.

“I think the trick or the temptation is always to react too strongly to short-term events and recent results and often those well laid plans for the management of a player’s life cycle go out the window as a function of a bad run of results or a bad set of performances.

Continued on page 16, column 1

Anderson believes that in time, the answer will lie in positional grid technology, which will inevitably become available to football clubs at some point in the future.

“I think, given the current availability and nature of the data that we are working with, it’s inherently more difficult to value defence and a defender’s contributions to the game accurately or appropriately” he says.

“So what I would say is the more traditional scouting tools at the moment are more valuable on the defensive end of the pitch than on the offensive end of the pitch.

“Now I think as we are moving forward, one of the quantitative tools that will help us a little bit with that is positional data, XY data, because

David Sally (left) and Chris Anderson, co-authors of The Numbers Game

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“I think here data can help understand what the true underlying abilities and performance levels are of a player, to then help manage that cycle more effectively. It’s also an important part of helping clubs manage their budgets in a more coherent way over time. If you understand the life cycle of a player, then that allows you to be more coherent in your budget area or your financial model.

you do sign and I think what you don’t want to do is sign the wrong player and I think having more information helps you avoid those pitfalls.”

“What you also want to understand is at what point is it worth paying a player a lot of money and at what point does it not make sense any longer to pay him a lot money. I think contracts that can be structured to be reflective of expected actual levels of performance are better for clubs.

Anderson believes that club’s will always be striving to secure any small advantage over its rivals, but in returning to his initial observation, he stresses it will be less about tapping into new information sources and more about how existing data can be interrogated more intelligently.

“To give you an example from North American sports, quite often players in baseball or basketball become eligible for big contracts when they’re already almost past their prime.

They become free agents and can extract a lot of money from the market when their performance has actually already peaked.

“You don’t necessarily have to try and pick the pockets of your competitors to find out exactly what they’re doing in order to compete,” he points out.

“That’s very, very inefficient for clubs. You want to buy them when they haven’t peaked yet and you want to pay them what they’re worth when they’re peaking, not afterwards.”

One key observation made within ‘The Numbers Game’ is the fact that clubs with greater resources benefit from a larger range of tools to assist with player recruitment, both in terms of the number of personnel and the tools available to them, to help with their evaluation and decision-making.

With so much information now available from industry suppliers and public domain sources, questions can be made as to how much further a club can take recruitment analysis in the future.

to go fishing for good practices necessarily in football.

“Football clubs by their very nature are competitive with one another, football as an industry is a competitive industry, but I think there are analogs and similarities in other kinds of sports that could be useful for other clubs to take a look at.

“I’m thinking of rugby, I’m think of basketball, I’m thinking of American football, those are the kind of sports where the analysis is happening and analytics is being driven forward and I think there are some good lessons to be learned. It all doesn’t have to come from within football.

“But again, I must stress that any such initiative has to be in support of the club’s existing processes; if it isn’t, then it’s just a luxury you can’t afford. It has to be all in support of the team and it has to be all geared towards winning football games.

“I think there is enough information out there in the world now that is provided through a number of platforms and data sources that means you cannot create competitive advantage simply by making use of that information.

“If it’s just a personal hobby of some guys working in the office then that’s not a good enough justification. It has to support what you’re trying to do.”

“I think it is not the access to the information that’s the big differentiator. I think the big differentiator is using that information productively. And there are also good things to learn from other sports so you don’t have

The Numbers Game: Why Everything You Know About Football is Wrong by Chris Anderson and David Sally is published by Penguin and is available at bookstores or online now at amazon.co.uk.

Considering the importance of recruiting the right players in terms of maximising your chances of achieving on-field goals, Anderson believes that it is the clubs working on more modest budgets that can get the most value out of employing a larger pool of recruitment staff and supporting technologies, as arguably more hinges on their decisions as they may not have the luxury of bringing in additional players if a financial investment in signing a player does not work out as a club envisaged.

He explains: “We live in a perverse industry where I think the clubs that have more resources devote more resources to employing more advanced and more modern technologies and sources of information to make decisions.

“In a way I think the better value for money is for those clubs that have fewer resources because there I think the technology offers a way of making the pound stretch a little further.

“I understand why clubs with fewer resources are sometimes loath to commit resources to these technologies because it takes money away from somewhere else, but I think for them the ultimate pay-off of those resources is going to be disproportionate relative to a bigger club with more resources.

“Of course such an investment as a proportion of the club’s budget seems like a bigger deal and so therefore there is an inclination not to spend as much or devote as many man hours to it in resources, but I think the pay-off is also disproportionately high if it is done and implemented correctly.

“At the end of the day it is often about the guys you don’t sign, as much as it is about the guys

16 PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL SOLUTIONS

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Elite Minds in Sports Analytics Summit 5th November 2013 Emirates Stadium, London *Delegate Passes still Available* Speakers Include:

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Brazil Emerge Victorious at 2013 Festival Espoirs de Toulon B

razil cemented their place as the most successful overseas nation in the forty-one year history of the Toulon Festival by defeating Colombia in this year’s Final.

including Colombia and the fourth placed team Portugal competed at the World Cup this year, following two weeks of intense preparation at the Festival.

Scout7 were also on hand to award the John Haynes Trophy to the Festival’s Breakthrough Player, following consultation with a broad range of scouts attending the tournament.

A single goal after three minutes by the tournament’s joint top scorer Vinicius Araújo was enough to ensure the Trophy went to a nation hailing from the Americas for the fourth time in the last five years.

The winners of this year’s World Cup, France, also entered a team, however as they competed with an U21 group it meant that none of the players that participated went on to compete in Turkey.

It was Brazil’s seventh Toulon title, which slightly made up for their disappointment in being unable to defend their FIFA World U20 title in Turkey this year, as a result of failing to qualify for the competition via the CONMEBOL Sudamericano U20 tournament.

In addition to securing the Toulon title, the Brazilian squad also featured heavily in the individual Festival awards. Mamute, an 18 year old forward currently playing for Grêmio was named as Player of the Tournament, whilst one of their central midfielders Danilo was also recognised, being the youngest player to start the Final at just 17 years and 100 days old.

The trophy was awarded to Jesús Manuel Corona, who at the time of the tournament played his club football for Monterrey in his homeland. He was awarded the prize following a number of eye catching performances up front, notably against Belgium in the final group game.

In total six of the ten Toulon participants,

18 PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL SOLUTIONS

Corona went on to start all of Mexico’s four matches at the World Cup before their elimination at the last 16 stage. Following his involvement in both tournaments, he was signed by Dutch Eredivisie side FC Twente this summer on a four year contract.

With such a strong line-up of nations taking part, 2013 saw an unprecedented number of scouts in attendance at Toulon. Over the course of the Festival fortnight, over 220 club representatives made the trip to the Cote d’Azur.

Throughout the competition, Scout7 were responsible for managing all of the competition’s scouting accreditation and on-site support, which included distribution of tournament notebooks, squad information and match teamsheets, together with offering individual assistance to scouts, advising them of travel and accommodation options across the six Festival venues, which were spread across a district made up of 280 kilometres.

Award Winners 2013 A total of 10 awards were handed out at the conclusion of the Festival.

This year’s recipients join a long line of elite players that have been formally recognised with individual trophies at Toulon, including Thierry Henry (Tournament MVP in 1997), Javier Mascherano (Tournament MVP in 2002) and Hugo Lloris (Best Goalkeeper, 2006).

Here are a selection of players who were recognised at the end of the competition.

Scout7 also provided all ten participating teams and the match officials with match footage from every game, delivered on the same day as the games taking place, which they could use to optimise their preparations for their next match.

With no major youth international tournament scheduled for next summer, the 2014 Toulon Festival will offer an opportunity for another generation of players to emerge on the international stage and potentially stake their claim for inclusion at the 2015 UEFA U21 Championship or FIFA U20 World Cup, subject to their nation securing their place at the finals of either competition.

The event will take place in late May, with full details on the competing teams being announced early in the New Year.

Tournament MVP: Mamute

MVP Runner Up: Harrison Mojica

Breakthrough Player : Jesús M. Corona

Best Goalkeeper: Zacharie Boucher

Full details from Toulon 2013, including squads, teamsheets and full match video is available now through Scout7’s Intelligent Sports Framework, ProScout7 and Scout7Xeatre platforms.

Colombia’s Perez (14) and Rafinha of Brazil duelling during the Toulon 2013 Final

Fair Play Award: The United States Team A full list of winners can be found on the Toulon website www.festival-foot-espoirs.com

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Optimising Data Interrogation

iSF Widgets Offering New Scope for Player Analysis S

ince the successful launch of the Intelligent Sports Framework (iSF) earlier this year, Scout7’s development team have recently introduced two further recruitment-based widgets onto the pioneering framework.

Both widgets have been developed during the past twelve months and are designed to enhance a club’s data collection on player prospects, in addition to allowing the interrogation of general player information in greater depth.

Template Builder The first of these widgets is a brand new report Template Builder, which allows clubs to build their own customisable report templates for both player and team assessments.

The search empowers users to create intelligent data search queries, which can be saved and stored within a search filing cabinet on the framework for future use.

The iSF search allows the club to interrogate database information by selecting and filtering from several different criteria from exhaustive dropdown lists.

These range from personal player attributes and contract statuses, through to domestic club history, as well as data relating to a player’s International career, using appearance data captured from both senior and youth levels.

Once search results have been delivered

with the players who hit the selected criteria, the user can then define which player-related statistics they wish to view from the result list.

This includes all data from a player’s personal record, as well as match related data from their club and international history.

Search results can also be exported from the framework into offline spreadsheet facilities, such as Microsoft Excel, for further analysis offline.

More information on both of these releases, together with general information on the iSF, can be obtained from Scout7’s Product Team by contacting product@scout7.com.

In the first instance, the builder allows the club’s administrator to incorporate player, team and fixture information from Scout7’s match datacentre, to pre-populate various sections of a report with event details from a match.

They will also be able to incorporate match diagram functionality – the first time such a facility has been available on a player assessment template.

More significantly, a user will also be able to attach video clips to a team or player report using a video editor which is embedded within the report template, so if a club wants to include footage from every set-piece in an opposition assessment, or subjective strengths/ weaknesses of a player to back up a point made in a player report, this will now be possible on the iSF.

Clubs can create their own Player and Team Report templates on the iSF

Player assessment templates will also be able to incorporate fully customisable rating systems, using matrices or numeric ratings for specific player attributes, which can be made specific for different positions depending on the type of player being assessed.

Moving forward, the introduction of the Template Builder will empower a club to optimise their assessment practices to a greater level over a longer period of time, as well as being able to use the information captured intelligently to run trend analysis on rating scores across a season-wide archive of reports.

Advanced Search The second development has seen the introduction of an Advanced Search engine.

The Advanced Search engine offers huge scope for data interrogation

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Spax Cup Remains in Rio for the Second Year Running

T

he Brazilian side Botafogo bounced back from their defeat in the final of the 2013 FIFA Blue Stars Youth Cup to successfully defend their Spax Cup title in Ennepetal last May. Despite being held on a weekend affected by damp weather, a large proportion of the town’s 33,000 inhabitants came to watch seven elite under 19 club teams from all around the world vie for top honours as the competition celebrated its 40th anniversary.

The hosts also fielded their own side in the competition, who as it turned out made a very good account of themselves. During the group stages, they held reigning German U19 National Champions FC Schalke 04 to a goalless draw and almost did the same thing to FC Twente, who had to score a very late goal to win their final group game.

Schalke did go on to win the group, thanks to comfortable wins over Twente and Olympiakos, who finished runners-up. The group winners also fielded 17 year old midfield player Max Meyer, who in the months prior to the competition had featured in six games for the first team, including one appearance in the Champions League against Galatasaray.

After scoring 2 goals in 3 appearances, Meyer

was named player of the tournament by the Head Coaches of the participating teams. Since the end of the competition he has also gone on to make his full debut for the Schalke first team, starting the first leg of the Champions League Play-Off tie against PAOK of Greece.

in the space of just five second half minutes.

The game finished 3-3.

Botafogo topped the other group, however their path to the semi-finals was less straightforward.

The final itself was held in very wet conditions and it required just a single goal to separate the sides. The goal was scored shortly before half time by the tournament’s top scorer Paulo, which ensured that the Spax Cup remains in Rio de Janeiro for another twelve months.

After drawing their first game against Borussia Dortmund thanks to a late equaliser against the run of play, and a narrow victory over Besiktas, they faced 1. FC Köln in their final game where a defeat would have meant elimination.

Throughout the competition Scout7’s video team filmed every game that took place, all of which were streamed live via the official tournament website and kicker.de to a global online audience in excess of 27,000.

However the game ended in a 3-3 draw, which meant both teams progressed to the semis with an identical record – the same number of points, wins, goals scored and goals conceded.

Botafogo were named group winners following a penalty shootout between the teams.

In total there were over 51,000 individual visits to the match streams on the official site during the competition, from 83 different countries.

Penalties were also required for both semifinals. The Brazilian side made it two shootout wins out of two after their match with Olympiakos finished tied at 1-1.

1. FC Köln joined them in the final, after beating Schalke 7-6 in their sudden death shootout.

During regular time, Schalke gave away a two goal lead as a result of conceding two penalties

All of the games were also made available to Scout7 clubs via each of the company’s application platforms, together with highlight compilations from each day via the ProScout7 Highlight Shows widget.

The 41st Spax Cup will take place on 7-9 June 2014.

For further information on the competition, please contact info@scout7.com or visit www. spax-cup.com.

Botafogo’s Sidney challenges current German U19 international Jeremy Dudziak during the opening game of the 2013 Spax Cup

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The Profile: Rob Mackenzie

Head of Technical Scouting, Leicester City What is your current role in professional football and what does that entail?

Officially my current role is Head of Technical Scouting at Leicester City. I’ve been doing this role since 2011.

Predominantly my role is to compliment the existing knowledge and expertise of the guys who implement more traditional scouting methods. We have a Head of Recruitment/Assistant Manager in Steve Walsh who has got vast experience of scouting players, both at home and abroad. We have also got a senior scouting coordinator in David Mills, who has worked in the game for numerous years and worked at the top level.

My challenge is to contribute something from an alternative perspective to compliment the work that they do, so I focus on profiling and highlighting prospective signings, both in this country and abroad.

I do that alongside Ben Wrigglesworth, who is a Technical Scout at the club. We work very closely together, creating video libraries of players and databasing the scout reports that come in from the part-time scouts, so we are able to compliment the analysis of what Ben and I do with the more subjective approach that I guess has traditionally been implemented.

I also observe the opposition we are due to play. I’m responsible for watching them the week before we play them, working closely with our opposition analyst Andy Blake to compile a summary report on how we think the opposition will play.

From what I understand, your background isn’t in recruitment but more on the side of performance analysis.

How did you get involved in player recruitment?

When I initially joined Leicester I was employed as a first team analyst, working alongside Andy Blake. It was part of an agreement with Loughborough University that I would do a Phd at Leicester City, investigating the use of performance analysis in professional football as well as being an analyst.

Initially I was looking at the level to which we were analysing our team and the opposition and I immediately thought there were obvious links with how a club or an organisation could look to employ these kind of tactics in their approach to looking at players from a recruitment perspective.

If you look at how comprehensive analysis can be on your own team, then I think there’s something appealing about being able to obtain a similar level of understanding about a player currently playing, for example, in the second division in Germany. Don’t get me wrong, I guess people are less under the radar than they ever were before, but for me there’s still something in having an in-depth knowledge and understanding of a player’s game and approach to the game that other people may not have.

Based on your experiences, how would you summarise the role of the Technical Scout within the Recruitment Operation?

The remit of a Technical Scout has got to be about minimising risk.

As an initial point of call, if a club wants to be proactive and has an understanding of the kind of profile they want for a player, having a team of technical scouts is probably the most efficient filtering system where you are able to go from a list of 200 players who may tick certain boxes, to suddenly having 15 before whittling that down again into a top 10 or a top 5.

We will explain to the scouts the reasons why we feel these players could contribute to the team in the future and then the scouts will go out and watch them. Then through further monitoring, I think as a club we can be more accurate and more reliable in our decision-making.

From a performance perspective, I think the work we do allows us to understand a new signing that is coming into the building more than ever before.

When we have had players come in, we have shown them the knowledge and understanding we have of their game and it sometimes comes as a bit of a surprise to them. But it then helps with the integration process as it allows us to flag what we like about them, as well as the areas that we may feel that we may have to tweak in order to help them fit into our team.

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As well as good analytical, organisation and coordination skills, what other tools do you need in order to do your job successfully?

I think one of the key qualities is having an understanding of the football club environment and the people you are working with. I think that allows you to put any statistic or any information/research that you are able to find into context.

Information or data can be interpreted in multiple ways and I think if you don’t have a sound understanding of how people at your club interpret data and how they would want data to be disseminated to them then I think you are going to struggle.

I think in line with that, you need to be able to communicate at different levels. So whether you are putting a presentation together for the Board, or communicating with your Director of Football, the way that you speak to people and describe and explain, for example the pros and the cons associated with a potential signing, is totally different to the way I would speak to one of our scouts.

You have got to be able to do that in order to get your message across. Without that you will always fall down.

What is the best thing about being involved in the recruitment process within a professional club?

There is a definite buzz for me in terms of trying to fully understand and get to grips with a player’s performance and approach who may be playing in a different country, but who you immediately feel based on the work you do may be suitable for your club.

Along with that there is nothing better than see a player come into your club, following the information you have provided and analysis that you conducted, and see them do exactly the same things that you have seen on the video and when you have watched them live.

From an opposition perspective, I get a certain level of satisfaction when nothing happens in a game that we haven’t prepared for, that confirms that the analysis that you have provided has definitely been comprehensive.

Are there any common misconceptions that you have frequently encountered about the merits of technical scouting?

I think sometimes there is a cautious scepticism in terms of people thinking that it will replace the live observation of players, but I think that couldn’t be more further from the truth. They both have to go hand-in-hand and have to compliment each other. I think the most effective clubs are the ones that have been able to successfully compliment the two approaches.

One thing I have encountered though is a lot of coaches and scouts who traditionally have been exposed to the highlight reels or DVDs that agents provide and can, let’s just say, manipulate the truth. They compile these videos of players looking like world beaters and I think sometimes when we conduct our own analysis and highlight the weakest part of the player’s game they are slightly surprised, because there is this assumption that the video they are watching should be a highlights video. That’s what they have always received for the past 10-15 years.

© Plumb Images

Our approach is obviously better because we have a far greater and more accurate understanding of the player, but in their minds if this player doesn’t blow them out of their seat, then there’s something quite wrong. So sometimes we have a challenge to reaffirm that the stuff we are doing is in no way influenced by agents and explain that we have actually gone through a pretty systematic and rigorous process to know what he’s good and what he’s bad at. For me, it is as important to know where a player needs to improve as well as knowing what they are really good at.

Three members of the Leicester City Recruitment Team (from left to right): Ben Wrigglesworth, Steve Walsh and Rob Mackenzie

23 PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL SOLUTIONS

Š Plumb Images

Since taking up your current position, are there any players you have helped recruit that you are particularly proud of and if so, why?

The most pride I take is the knowledge that any player that we bring into this football club now will have gone through an accountable analysis process that looks at not only general observation, but all the statistics that we are able to draw upon from previous performances as well.

I guess the one that does spring to mind would be Anthony Knockaert, who we signed from Guingamp in Ligue 2 from France. He was highlighted from the analysis we conducted as being a very creative player, in terms of the number of 1-v-1 opportunities he would get involved in. He would take players on and be very positive in games and created a lot of chances for his side. This was then also confirmed by scouting trips made by Steve Walsh, David Mills and Nicky Eaden (U21 Assistant Manager) to see Knockaert play live.

Last season he was our top chance creator from games, I think he averaged about 2.6 chances a game and I think the analysis we did on him in the twelve months beforehand allowed us to get in ahead of other clubs who were potentially undecided - no one had gone to the level that we had in terms to actually putting a bid in and trying to secure him.

The role of the Technical Scout did not exist 10 years ago and with advances in technology I can imagine the role is a dynamic one. Even in the short time you have held your current role, can you give an insight into how the role has evolved?

It has evolved massively. I think from that initial December when I started through to the first summer, the work I did must have focused on approximately 5-10 players. Then that summer we brought in Ben Wrigglesworth as a Technical Scout Intern, who has now proven himself to have done well enough to secure a full-time role.

Between us we looked at just over 450 different players in one season alone, obviously with varying levels of analysis - sometimes you would do initial work on a player and find out quite quickly that he wasn’t the right fit for your club.

However of the 154 that we went into really explicit detail for, 95 have moved in the last twelve months and of those 95, 70% of them have either moved to a better club or a better standard of league. For us that obviously acts as a confirmation that the methods we are following are sound.

Last season we would have predominantly been sourcing match videos and analysing the games ourselves, but as of this season we are going to be receiving match data from Scout7 and Opta, so we are now sat in a position where we have full data statistically from every game played in the Championship and three of the top five leagues across Europe, so now we are able to go to a level where in our market we are able to be very, very competitive.

So for example we may look to profile the out-of-contract players from the Bundesliga if we feel that they are realistic targets for our club, based on where we are at in comparison to other clubs, and we are able to go to the extent of looking statistically across all of these games in the season to build a profile of each player.

Now 18 months ago this was solely done on video and at the time that was something totally new. Now the use of video analysis is fully integrated

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throughout the scouting department and is taken as the norm. I guess the challenge for us now is to make the statistical element of the assessment as integrated as the video analysis in terms of investigating a player’s biographical profile.

I like to think that we have come quite a long way in a reasonably short period of time. Encouragingly some of the signings that the club have made have gone through this process and have added credibility to the process, as they have come in and performed exactly as we hoped.

If you were going to give any advice to someone without a previous background in professional football that is interested in getting into recruitment, what would it be?

The reality is that it is difficult to find opportunities, but I would encourage people interested in this area of the sport to reflect on the way they watch football, because that really is key.

One of the things that stood out about Ben Wrigglesworth as a candidate was that without any prompting he had decided to go through and analyse all of the goals that Lionel Messi had ever scored in his career and looked for any recurring patterns and trends. Did he score at certain times in the game? Was it always his first touch? Things like that.

That demonstrated to me that he had gone through a stringent analysis process. It is a mind-set, a critically analytical approach to football performance that people must be able to turn their hand to. You have to say to yourself, ‘I won’t just sit back and watch this game, I’ll try to establish what is going on and ask key questions - what is this team trying to achieve in the final third? What is this team trying to do?’

I think if you are able to compile information like that independently off your own back for clubs that is definitely appealing, because it not only shows that you are proactive, but it also demonstrates you have an analytical mind-set which I think is fundamental to this role.

Looking ahead, do you think there are any untapped areas of player assessment or evaluation which may play a more prominent role in the future?

An area that interests me is trying to understand and establish what constitutes team success in a given competition.

I also look at successful teams and their ability to come back from a goal behind or win away from home. I think there is something collectively going on with those groups of players and I think that their experiences can actually inform you and help you establish a profile for a player.

This is not only with regard to the technical, tactical and statistical analysis that we are able to conduct, but also the psychology of the player as well.

© Plumb Images

For example, are there any patterns or trends within a profile of successful teams in a certain league? Is there an average age and an average experience level of certain individuals within a team within certain positions? Can you break that down and establish patterns over long periods of time that can then inform the biographical profile that you look for in a player in order to bring you closer to that blueprint for success?

Anthony Knockaert, signed from Guingamp in the summer of 2012

Rob Mackenzie - Career History

H

aving initially been on the books of York City as a schoolboy, Rob Mackenzie made a decision early in his career to focus on securing a specialist backroom position within a professional football club.

After obtaining a first-class degree in Sports Science at Liverpool John Moores University, he elected to stay on and complete a MSc in the Psychology of Sport, which he completed whilst also coaching at the Liverpool Ladies Centre of Excellence.

In 2009 he was given the opportunity to apply for a Phd in Performance Analysis in Professional Football at Loughborough University, which included a hands-on analyst role at Leicester City. In 2011, his role at the club changed to became Technical Scout and he has since overseen the establishment of a Technical Scouting department, with the assistance of his assistant Ben Wrigglesworth.

His work on his Phd is currently ongoing and he recently had an academic journal published in the Journal of Sports Sciences, titled ‘A critical review and implications for future research of Performance analysis in football’.

25 PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL SOLUTIONS

Spanish & Serbian teams emerge victorious at 2013 FIFPro Tournaments D

uring the close season Scout7 supported two tournaments organised

by FIFPro, which featured teams from eleven countries made up of disengaged players representing their respective national player unions.

The first competition was the inaugural FIFPro Tournament Central Europe, which took place across the first weekend of July in Nyon, Switzerland. It featured teams from Bulgaria (Team ABF), Greece (Team PSAP), Serbia (Team Nezavisnost), Slovenia, (Team SPINS) and Switzerland (Team SAFP).

It turned out to be an evenly matched affair, with the five participating teams being separated by just three points in the final standings. The Nezavisnost Team ended up being victorious, securing top spot on goal difference ahead of Team PSAP.

Later in the same month, the ninth edition of FIFPro’s annual flagship tournament was held in Rijnsburg in the Netherlands, featuring Spain (Team AFE), Portugal (Team SJPF), France (Team UNFP), Netherlands (Team VVCS), Denmark (Team Spillerforeningen) and Belgium (Team Players4contract).

The tournament was won by the Team AFE, who defeated Team UNFP 3-2 on penalties after the final finished deadlocked at 1-1. Their captain, Fran González, was also named as the Tournament MVP. As well as scoring the opening goal of the final, the former Zaragoza holding midfielder was also the only player in the Spanish side to play the full game and scored the decisive penalty in the shootout to secure the title.

The tournaments gave over 200 players the

opportunity to showcase their talent in front of dozens of scouts from all around Europe as they looked to secure professional employment ahead of the new season.

Following both events, a number of players who participated were full of praise of FIFPro’s initiative in staging the competitions.

The experienced captain of the Spillerforeningen team, Jan Frederiksen, has made over 150 first team league appearances in a professional career which has included spells playing in Holland, Belgium and Poland.

Following his participation, he explained how pleased he was with the general standard of the tournament.

“I wouldn’t say I’m surprised (about the standard of the football) because I knew there were good

“It was very professional with the set up and the hotels, very high standards.

“Our first game against Belgium was quite a good game. From our point of view we tried to play the ball fast and easy and run for each other, but we lost. That’s the way it sometimes goes in games, but it was a very good game.

“In the second game, Spain were really good.

They found the space between us - you know Spain they are good in the small areas and they were too good for us.”

At the other end of the scale in terms of first team experience, Belgian goalkeeper Glenn Daniels was just pleased to get the chance to play in front of scouts.

The 19-year-old made his senior first team league debut on the last day of the 2012/13 season during a loan spell for the Scottish First Division Champions Partick Thistle, and is now looking for a new club following his release from Celtic in the summer.

Keeping Involved in the Game Following their participation in the summer FIFPro competitions, several dozen players managed to secure a contract for the 2013/14 season across a wide range of different European leagues.

Here is just a selection of players who are now playing regularly for their domestic clubs having entered pre-season disengaged: Nikos Tsoumanis – Aris (Super League, Greece) Steffen Ernemann - Sarpsborg 08 FF (Tippeligaen, Norway) Habib Jean Baldé - Universitatea Cluj (Divizia A, Romania) Fran González - Córdoba (Segunda, Spain) Roland Bergkamp – FC Emmen (Jupiler League, Netherlands) Marco Varga - FC Schaffhausen (Challenge League, Switzerland) Uroš Korun - NK Domzale (Prva Liga, Slovenia) Jovan Radivojevic - Zvijezda Gradacac FK (Premijer Liga, Bosnia-H) Cafú - Academico Viseu (Liga Vitalis, Portugal) Filippos Sachsanidis – Panionios (Super League, Greece) Ali Imren - Gaziantep BB (Türk Telekom Lig A, Turkey)

it’s a great opportunity to be here and great to be a goalkeeper in this kind of tournament.”

the official tournament programme, which was distributed to each scout in attendance.

Since the competitions took place, over sixty-five players have gone on to secure employment for the new campaign.

“I’m 19, so it’s very important for me to get some games under my hat.”

These include several who have secured contracts in top flight leagues at various clubs around Europe.

Then post competition, full tournament information including squads, teamsheets, starting formations, match events and full match video from every game was made available to all of Scout7’s client clubs across the company’s various application platforms, including the iSF, ProScout7 and Scout7Xeatre.

“This tournament is a great opportunity for all the players to be fair. It is a big tournament known all over the world, more so in Europe but

As part of Scout7’s support for each competition, the company provided detailed career CVs for each participating player for

More information on the 2013 FIFPro Tournaments, including more interviews with players can be found at FIFPro.org.

“I’m a free player at the moment, so I’m looking to have a club but I don’t really mind where it is, as long as I can play games,” says Daniels.

© Stéphane Saint-Raymond

people here,” said Frederiksen, who is a former Danish U21 left back.

Scout7 Profile: Jason Withe Asian Business Development

When did you join Scout7 and what does your current role entail?

I was first introduced to Scout7 technology in 2007 when I was scouting for Norwich City under Bryan Gunn, who was then the Chief Scout. From 2009 I then worked for Scout7’s Consultancy arm on a part-time basis, producing opposition analysis reports for Football League and Conference clubs. My current role involves developing new business in Asia and developing the market on this side of the world.

Prior to working for Scout7, what was your involvement in professional football?

I suppose I have been involved in football all my life, having been brought up watching my father (Peter Withe), who had a successful career in the game. It was a natural progression for me to follow in his footsteps.

I played for a number of clubs: West Bromwich Albion, Burnley, Crewe Alexandra and Stockport County, before going into non-league with Stafford Rangers and AFC Telford. I then went into coaching, heading up the Community Program at Birmingham City.

I also started delivering Coach Education before heading off for my first managerial experience in Thailand, coaching Bec Tero Sasana FC in the Thai Premier League.

I went on to coach with the Thailand National Team, Indonesian National Team and was also Head Coach for Home United FC in the Singapore S-League. I then returned to the UK, becoming Academy Manager for Aldershot Town and more recently Director of Football at Leicester City for the Women and Girls Centre of Excellence.

I was also delivering FA courses as an FA Licensed Tutor.

You have had a lot of experience of football in Asia in the past. How would you gage the development of domestic football in the region during the past decade?

It is improving all the time, but historically it has always been playing catch up-to the big leagues in Europe. However if you look at the number of spectators going to games, most of the leagues are very well supported - I remember in Indonesia when we were playing at the national stadium and getting over 100,000 people. The coaching infrastructure does need improving a great deal however and of course finances play a big part.

Are there any special achievements or key moments from your coaching career which stand out for you?

At 29 I took my first manager’s job with Bec Tero Sasana FC in the Thai Premier League. In my first season we missed out on winning the league on goal difference, but in my second season I steered the team to a domestic double and success in the AFC Champions League, reaching the quarter finals.

This was quite an achievement, especially when you consider I was not able to speak the language.

How much of an impact has the globalisation of the major European leagues, particularly with the involvement of Asian players, had on the popularity of the sport and the development of players active in East Asian domestic leagues?

Players now have a real belief that they can achieve success playing for a big team in Europe. In the late 1990’s Hidetoshi Nakata paved the way and now others have followed such as Park Ji-Sung and Shinji Kagawa, who both ended up playing for Manchester United. We now even see someone like Ali Al-Habsi, an Omani international, playing in England for Wigan Athletic.

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The impact of these players is beneficial in many ways - not only do other players want to emulate them, but all of a sudden a whole nation will follow that particular player, buying shirts and watching games.

With the benefit of increased visibility of these players, particularly through database and video content through Scout7, hopefully that will open doors with teams in Europe using the system and having more access to players from far and wide.

Following your appointment at Scout7, what are you looking to achieve in Asia and the Middle East during the next six months?

Initially it will be making contact with associations and clubs and letting them know how we can help enhance their scouting and recruitment process.

Having a point of contact based in Asia is vitally important, as that face value is important when doing business this side of the world.

In terms of infrastructure, do you think Scout7 applications can help clubs in Asia and the Middle East develop their scouting and squad management practices?

This is something that many clubs need to improve on in Asia.

If you look at clubs in Europe, the staff behind the scouting and recruitment play a major part in the club’s success. In many Asian countries, staffing for recruitment is usually undertaken by the Head Coach or owner, with no real data to help. This is where Scout7 applications can be of real benefit to organisations. Processes for scouting opposition teams and players also need to improve – and having the right staff looking in the right areas is key.

From a European Club perspective, how important is it to have an in-depth knowledge of the emerging talents to come out of the region?

We are living in a technological age and for me, if you can have the information and video at your fingertips through applications such as the iSF, and you feel that it can improve your business, then it’s a no brainer.

I’m not sure all clubs are able to access all of the talent based here in Asia at this present time and with the help of Scout7 developing this market, it can only assist current users to take a real look at emerging talents here.

Finally, Pele famously said that he thought an African nation would win the World Cup by the year 2000.

Whilst winning the competition would be a huge ask considering the strength of the European and South American teams, do you think it is possible an Asian team could potentially challenge for top honours at some point during the next 30 years?

At this moment in time, Asia has eight nations in the top 100 FIFA rankings and only two in the top 50. The highest nation is Japan who are 44th.

With Asia only having four or possibly five teams competing in a World Cup compared to Europe’s twelve, the odds are always stacked against an Asian team winning it, so in the short term I would have to say no.

But as the World Cup becomes a knockout tournament after the group stages you never know what can happen. You only have to take Greece as an example of this - who would have tipped them to win Euro 2004? South Korea got to the semi-finals in 2002, only to narrowly lose to Germany 1-0, so if you can get through the group stages it can become more unpredictable.

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