Sparky’s Column

Behind the Curtain

Last week I spoke about the attention to detail that's vital for success. I was lucky enough this week to catch up with Liam Weeks, Head of Performance Analysis at Al Ain and we talked about the detail. In 2012 the use of technology is key and the most useful tool in modern football and could be considered the all seeing eye. Prozone provides statistics, analysis and an overall view of performance. The system at Al Ain use has 9 cameras dotted around the stadium, meaning every angle of play is covered. The video of the match is sent to Prozone, which is for this region is located in India. The staff analyse both individual and team performance. What returns is every conceivable piece of data be it physical, tactical or technical. Liam is the man who will condense this to a 50 page report on the match, this will be passed onto coach Cosmin for dissection by his staff. The vital components will be things like distances covered, completed passes and the direction of those passes. They can for example see the effectiveness of an attacking midfielder by looking at his distances covered, where the runs started and finished plus how many passes were forward. Pro zone is also used to scout the opposition. A standard TV recording can be fed into the system and an analysis of your opponents produced. You can see, for example, if a certain midfielder links up with a forward player for 40% of the teams goals. You have this information and can look to break up this partnership.  It is a vital tool in modern football with all Premier League and Championship clubs using it in England. Here in the Pro League Al Ain, Al Ahli and Al Jazira have all signed up for the system.

GPSports is as it sounds a Global Positional System that tracks players in training. Every twist, turn and sprint can be tracked, why is this useful? The system can be used for any number of applications. Simplest being how much distance was covered by the player in a session. If more detail is required then it can check changes of direction, heart rate and speed. The application of this could be a player returning from injury who the medical staff don't want to cover more than 3km in a session. The player can be pulled out of the session as he reaches that distance. The coach may require the session to be done at a certain pace then that can be tacked in real time to see that the players are working at the required intensity. The player then has no argument about his work rate as the coach can pull out the stats from his laptop.

The other advances are less technical, the menu has been changed so it reflects a healthy diets with the addition of protein shakes post match and training. The players all have individualised prehab programmes they have to undertake in the gym prior to the main training session.  Prehab is basically to opposite of rehab, it is a series of exercise aimed at preventing injury. If players have physical weaknesses then that can be worked on or used to manage chronic injuries that players often have to live with.  

That is just the a glimpse behind the curtain in terms of what the back room team do at a football club and the attention to the tiniest of details can be the difference.