Football: Science makes it an even better art

How big is the database of footballers from which Germany national coach Joachim Loew chose his eventual 23 for his country's World Cup challenge?

Try a staggering 10,000 players.

With the click of a mouse, Loew can pick up player records from as far as five years back, with all the data having been streamed and studied by enterprise software giant SAP.

Besides the accuracy of passes and shots, advanced metrics such as how long a player holds the ball before releasing it, or his favourite positions on the field to initiate a dribble, are also tallied.

SAP - an official partner of Die Mannschaft - will also analyse any top-flight match of Loew's choosing, highlighting areas such as how quickly a backline expands and contracts without possession, or whether a striker is pressing opponents at the correct angles to cut off passing lanes.

With such comprehensive data, sound reasoning - rather than perceived bias - could perhaps explain Loew's much-debated selection of 35-year-old Miroslav Klose as Germany's only recognised striker heading to Brazil.

"Loew knows exactly what he's doing - he's obsessed about statistics, demanding to know not just everything about his players but about his opponents as well," said SAP scientific adviser Michael Steinbrecher, who works closely with Loew and his staff, during the company's Sapphire Now conference at the Orange County Convention Center yesterday.

Blessed with top deep-lying forwards like Mario Goetze, Marco Reus and Thomas Mueller, the Germans have recently plumped for possession-based football without a target man, where the forwards often make late diagonal runs into space behind opponents' defence.

Besides detailed dossiers on Group G opponents Portugal, Ghana and the United States, the German squad will also receive personalised reports on their iPads after each match.

This shows if individual targets Loew had set for them - such as pass accuracy in the final third or tackle success rate - were met, as well as areas of focus for their next opponents.

In fact, tablets bearing real-time analytics would be a common sight in the dug-out of Germany and several other top nations, if not for world football governing body Fifa's resistance to adopting technology during matches.

But that has not deterred Bundesliga outfit Hoffenheim from deploying the latest optical tracking technology in training sessions this season.

Players wear tiny sensors on their jerseys and under their shinpads which, in tandem with cameras around the pitch, feed data instantaneously to coaches on a Google Glass or a tablet.

"If we're playing an 8 v 8 match, a clip can be shown to the player right there on why he didn't succeed in gaining the upper hand with limited space," said Bernhard Peters, Hoffenheim's director for sports and youth training.

"With a 3-D demonstration using SAP software, I can then highlight the correct distance he should stand away from his team-mates and how he should angle his body to increase passing options."

To maintain their brand of open, attacking football, Hoffenheim staff also emphasise fast reaction times and using peripheral vision to look for gaps.

The unheralded outfit, who were promoted to the top tier six years ago, scored 72 goals in 34 league games this season - bettered only by giants Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund. The club finished ninth for their first top-10 placing since 2009.

Peters said: "The days of taking players to a dressing room and showing them how it's done on a whiteboard, only for them to forget it minutes later, are over.

"Whether people like it or not, the digital age of football has begun."

This article was first published on June 5, 2014.
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