Football and technology are a winning team

A batting cage meets Michael Laudrup

• Kaj Grønbæk spoke about the most recent developments in interactive training instruments that will benefit both the pro and the Sunday league footballer.
• In the Football Lab the player finds himself on a quadratic pitch surrounded by four walls with sensors and speakers. The walls take turns to tell the player to pass the ball in their direction. The ball bounces back and the player has to quickly pass it in a new direction.
• In another edition the walls show a green light in order to show the player where he needs to shoot but they also show a red light telling the player where to shoot afterwards, thus training the player’s ability to think ahead. This training exercise focuses on evolving a 360° vision on the pitch a la Michael Laudrup.

Whose fans are loudest?

• Rune Veerasawmy has developed a way for football supporters to actively compete against the opposition’s fans live during the game. It is called BannerBattle.
• The two set of fans see the same content on a screen next to the pitch which shows the current score. The fans have to sing as loud as possible to force the image of the opposition away from the screen. It is a hard job if you are the away team fans but as Rune describes the underdog role can stimulate the sense of solidarity in the fan group.
• In an AGF home game the Esbjerg fans found a way to overtake the screen for small periods of time by making surprise attacks and suddenly starting to sing when the home fans were taking a bit of a rest. However the AGF supporters soon responded and the battle was full on again.
• The study from the trial period shows that both set of supporters are especially active in the less intense parts of the game.
• The BannerBattle concept has been tested in three Superliga games. It aims at engaging the supporters and expanding the match goers’ collective experience.

A real life version of Football Manager

• Hans Krabbe told that Big Data is the new black in football. Big Data is a collection of almost infinite details about games and players.
• When football is monitored in such a way it gets easier to find your next transfer target.
• You can plot in your club’s preferences such as age, height, should he be right- or left-footed, past injuries and so on. The point is that you will find players that you would not have reached with conventional methods.
• Hans Krabbe revealed that FC Midtjylland tracked Tim Sparv from Finland in this way. He was relatively unknown, there was no hype about him and FCM got him for a smaller fee.
• Hans Krabbe wants value for money and Big Data is a way of finding just that.
• GPS sensors have become an integral part of elite football, tracking the players every movement in order to scrutinize and optimize.

If an analytical approach to football appeals to you https://twitter.com/optajoe is a great way to go.

This article was written based on the event: Football and Technology