Football analytics have been around for a long time, but how they are done has remained practically unchanging. Most of the work is done manually, which requires a lot of personnel and working hours. Yet, the produced data is shallow.
Modern tracking technologies can provide faster solutions but, at the same time, the quality of data may decrease. This is where Wisesport steps in.
Wisesport launched a new football analytics platform in the summer 2020. The platform was tested and deemed more than capable of use on football turfs, which our long experience with ice hockey rinks supported. Wisesport was ready to start improving the football data analytics platform and take it to the next level.
A football field is much larger than an ice hockey rink, and for testing we used portable locators around the pitch to track movements of the ball and players. Results were solid, and an outside environment did not affect the quality of tracking data.
The first professional game
The next step of development was testing the football analytics platform in an actual professional pre-season game environment. In June 2020, we had the perfect opportunity to use the Wisesport platform in a pre-season match between two Finnish Premier League teams, FC Haka and FC TPS.
Wisesport’s development team worked hard to prepare the platform for the first real game. Our experts designed a suitable way to equip players with tracking chips and ensure that the ball is not affected by the integrated tracking chip.
It is extremely important that the object in play, such as a ball or an ice hockey puck, maintains its normal properties. This has been well accomplished with the ice hockey puck as well as the football.
Valuable partnership
After the first professional game, it did not take long for Wisesport to get the first major partner in football, the Football Association of Finland.
The association was interested in the possibilities that Wisesport could provide for player development which is now in the focus of Finnish football and the sport in general. Finnish football is gaining more and more resources and attention, and Wisesport can provide analytical and video tools for the Football Association to create new prospects for player development.
“We can use Wisesport’s real-time data for a full analysis of players’ and teams’ tactical, technical, and physical performance aspects. These aspects are crucial in coordinating our national football team as well as the overall player development in Finland”, said Ville-Pekka Inkilä, Head of Research and Development in the Football Association of Finland last summer.
Football expertise into product development
The Wisesport platform was quickly installed to the Eerikkilä Training Centre, the main training center of the Football Association of Finland.
The partnership is mutually beneficial: with a platform that can track players and analyze the data in real time, only the sky is the limit to what the organization can do with the analytics. This allows Wisesport to gain valuable knowledge on different aspects of the game. The Football Association receives a superior set of real-time data analytics that can raise the level of Finnish player development programs.
“The analytics and automated system control in ice hockey have proved extremely reliable and robust. From the start, we could turn our attention to the special aspects of football. Collaboration with the Football Association of Finland and the Eerikkilä Training Centre brings world-class football expertise into our product development. We can concentrate on the essential and together build a sustainable basis for analytics,” Wisesport’s Head of Sales Miska Kuusisto said when the partnership began.
During the summer 2020, Wisesport’s new football analytics platform went through thorough testing, and it became clear that the Wisesport sports analytics family is here to stay. Football can be digitalized in the same way ice hockey has already been, and the whole football ecosystem will have unique digital real-time features and opportunities.
This is the seventh part of a blog series that we began on Wisehockey.com. Join us on the journey through the story of fully automated real-time sports analytics!
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
