FIFA steps up courtesy Arsene Wenger

Courtesy of Arsene Wenger, football global governing body, FIFA, has disclosed its latest step up plans

for performance analysis of its football matches.

Going by the plans which will be implemented for the FIFA Arab Cup 2021 and also the highly anticipated FIFA World Cup 2022, a team of experts will analyse every player for every second of every game.

The experts analysing the FIFA Arab Cup 2021 will be based in Newport, Wales and for each match, an analyst is assigned to one player on the field to monitor, track and code their individual performance.

This includes noting a player’s movement with and without the ball, how many times they break through lines of defense and how much pressure they put on opposition ball carriers.

This intensive analysis means that over 15,000 data points are collected from every game, giving team analysts, coaches, players, media and supporters new insights to help them better understand and enjoy the game.

This work reflects the vision of  Wenger, FIFA’s Chief of Global Football Development whose vision is for technical observations and football data analytics to be used together to increase and develop the understanding of the game and improve the fan experience.

The team in Newport, headed by Chris Loxston, Group Project Leader of FIFA’s Football Performance Analysis & Insights team, is made up of 50 football analysts as well as data engineers, data scientists and performance analysts and is supported by a team on the ground in Doha as well.

“We have a team of 25 analysts working on each game, so we have one analyst covering one player for the entire period of the game. So what that allows us to do is go into real, great detail around what that player’s doing. Typically, a football data set only looks at all the actions around the ball; what we are actually able to do here is look at all the actions off the ball and around the ball as well. An average football data set is somewhere around 2,000-2,500 events per game; we collect in excess of 15,000 data points,” Loxston said.

Former England head coach Steve McClaren has also been in Newport in his role as a FIFA technical expert.

A pioneer of using data analytics during the early part of his career as assistant manager at Manchester United, McClaren is animated when speaking about the range of possibilities these insights will provide for coaches and players as well as fans.

He also sees these insights as being particularly advantageous in increasing global competitiveness.

“For the underdog, for the smaller nations, smaller countries who probably won’t have access to this information, then it’s invaluable and might just give them a critical edge, a marginal gain, we’re talking about small percentages. Ultimately, that’s the vision of FIFA; making World Cups more competitive. If we can give information – and that's what we’re doing at the moment to the smaller nations, and helping them develop their countries to close the gap – that’s what FIFA wants. That’s their vision,” he said.