Data and sports are no longer a crazy combination. Football and data are now almost inseparable. Footballers are judged on statistics, and Memphis Depay partly decided to transfer to Olympique Lyon. Traditional football scouts were initially still wary of data. They now also see that data can be used as a tool. For example, data can be used to know where a player can gain ground.
Sports research shows that every Eredivisie team deals with data differently. Excelsior sees the information as a support for what is happening on the field. Excelsior regularly uses data, and the Rotterdam club sees this as one of the past three years’ successes factors.
Data provides a completely objective picture
Data analytics increasingly provides a complete and objective picture of the player’s performance, indicates the form in which a player is and where a player can still develop. Just sailing on your gut feeling is no longer enough. In today’s world of digitization, an opinion is only an opinion. With data, you can see your gut feeling confirmed or invalidated.
Data enables tilting towards the customer
Data is playing an increasingly important role in all domains of work. Information is increasingly entering the heart of business operations. This enables the shift from functional to process and customer-oriented. This allows you to learn much faster and therefore adapt much faster.
Data analytics makes you smarter
Suppose it is known how likely a player is to pull in, at what moments he will start a sprint, which position of players at a corner leads to which rehearsed variant. In that case, this knowledge makes the players smarter. As a result, players learn to structurally read the opponent’s game better. The “arms race” that thus arises is aimed at masking these patterns again. But until then, matches are increasingly being won behind the screen.
