Football Hackers: The Science and Art of a Data Revolution

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Introduced a new perspective on the importance of narratives, both human and data-driven, in shaping the football world. Coaches are usually spot on when it comes to assessing their own team’s chances but they’re not nearly as precise when it comes to the opposition’s opportunities.’

Football Hackers by Christoph Biermann | Waterstones

Another really interesting trend (used by Midtjylland and Tuchel for example) is psychological profiling of players and how different players work together. So that your team needs a balanced amount of fighters, artists, engineers and social workers on the field (similar to Belbin). You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here. The question is no longer whether data gets consulted – but how good it is, how layered and to what extent it guides the recruitment process. The muted response showed up one fundamental problem of data analytics in football: most coaches spend so much time working with their teams. Es un poco extraño que este libro de Christoph Biermann llamara mi atención cuando me topé con el en la sección de remates de mi librería local. No soy, ni por accidente, un aficionado del fútbol. Los goles no me inspiran ninguna sensación sublime ni tampoco me apasiona discutir las mejores estrategias en la cancha, por lo que suelo esquivar las grandes polémicas del balón, como la reciente decisión del árbitro en el partido entre Perú y Uruguay en Montevideo.The Tifo Football Podcast — This has great interviews and discussions about tactics. It is mostly about the English Premier League, but do go over other areas of interest. Biermann is open minded enough not to foist opinions on what he presenting and let us decide if things make sense or are applicable to the game. It would seem at this point in time there isn’t a clear Moneyball stat that’ll let teams play the game in a more efficient way overall, but there are likelihoods attached with every action which will correspond with the xG and other similar stats. The biggest thing appears to be with transfers completed utilising data with Brighton an early adopter of the strategy exemplified by their signing of Pascal Gross in the book. But with data now widely available, clubs can create a shortlist of players who have statistics that fit a particular profile, all without having to leave the training centre. For Manchester City, Juventus or FC Bayern, only about 300 to 500 players are real contenders. But a club at the level of Wigan, for example, can chose from about 3,500. A smaller club’s chance of gaining quality is therefore much higher. On the other hand, the Wigans of this world find it much more difficult to carefully consider possible signings than bigger clubs with access to far greater resources in that regard. Readers interested in how data analytics is transforming traditional sports and entertainment sectors.

How Video and Data Analysis Are - Performance Institute

Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial? Biermann states that numbers could be useful in the field of fitness but that: ‘data’s usability for devising successful strategies with the ball and tactics was less clear-cut.’

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Biermann adds that data will also play a crucial role in the automation of visual game analysis. ‘A situation on the pitch is codified, data gets searched along these parameters and the corresponding video sequence gets played out.’ Really interesting idea is that of Ghosting - a game is played and based on the data feed into the computer previously - the computer offers an ideal route for the player to take in that situation. So for a defender to either close down the opposition or stay put on the 16m area line. And you can see live the difference between the two. Same can be applied to refereeing if we know from which positions referees make the best calls - so with ghosting we could teach referees where to position.

Football Hackers Book Review: Football Hackers

The future of football will not simply belong to those with the best data, but those who draw the best conclusions from the information at their disposal. The model even takes into account the relative age effect for youngsters: players born in the second half of the year are at an advantage when they come up against those born in the first six months.The biggest change in football and how it is understood and interpreted has come from the rise of video analyses. Firstly it has enabled brilliant coaches like Guardiola or Van Gaal or Tuchel or Klopp to study extensive videos on their oppositions and their own team performances to come up with new ways of succeeding. It has also enabled them to learn from other coaches and derive how successful their methods are. At first, the scraps of overseas footage that Hitzfeld and his assistant, Michael Henke, found on German television did not really cut the mustard, while scouting trips that covered just one or two matches did not provide meaningful insights that could be shared with other members of staff.

English Football’s Top TEN ‘Hackers’ Of All Time? English Football’s Top TEN ‘Hackers’ Of All Time?

Is there a fairer way to measure the quality of a team performances over the result or standard things like possession and attempts of goal. Something like Expected Points or Expected Goals? There’s a case of a team in Eastern Europe that employed a company called 21 st club that specialises in this field of work. Como lección de sus observaciones y entrevistas en el campo, Biermann concluye que la data, ya sea cruda o cocida mediante estadísticos que condensan en cifras objetivas diversos aspectos del juego, no es suficiente para tomar decisiones correctas ni para juzgar con justicia a un equipo o jugador individual. Se necesita siempre del contexto para su correcta interpretacion (p. 166) y, mas que números mágicos que desentrañen el secreto final del éxito, la data debe ser utilizada como un soporte de pequeñas mejoras sostenidas en el tiempo. Prior to the modern era of ubiquitous digital footage of thousands of games and the availability of cheap computing power coming up with better football statistics has not been possible. Charles Reep’s simplistic counting of passes being the best known failed example. But today with annotations available for thousands of games a year being done more sophisticated analysis has become possible. But it would be absurd, in this day and age, to look for players without the use of digital pre-sorting facilities.This fell somewhere between Soccernomics and one of Michael Calvin's books, as Biermann explored the metrics that are now being used to analyse football, but also gained access to people at the vanguard of using them. Reinforced the belief that while data is transformative, the soul of football remains human, making every game an unpredictable delight.