Last week I was fortunate enough to attend the Leicester City Tactical Insights conference at the King Power Stadium, on behalf of Total Football Analysis. It was an incredible event attended by some of the world’s leading minds on data analysis, and over the course of the day, we heard talks from Barcelona, Arsenal, Chelsea, and the German National team set-up, as well as from a couple of other companies working behind the scenes in data analytics.
In this write-up, I will go through the presentations of the day and draw conclusions based upon the points made from the speakers. However, this is very much a brief overview of what was discussed at the conference. The talks were all different lengths so some sections below will be longer than others.
Over the course of the day, there were several themes that kept reappearing. One of the most common points made by almost every speaker was the need for those working in tactical analysis and those working in coaching to ensure they speak the same language. If the analysis is presented in such a way that alienates coaches then it’s no use because it will be ignored.
Introduction
Mladen Sormaz, Head of Analytics at Leicester City, spoke briefly at the beginning to introduce the day and pose some questions to the 300 people in attendance.
He spoke of focusing on two things when working on analysis. The first of these was to define the question in detail. For example, if the question is “How do the teams press?” then to give more depth to this question, Is the press ball-oriented, man/space-oriented? What do we define as a press? Of course, throughout all analysis, context is key, and should, therefore, be considered at all times. This was a theme that was revisited by many of the speakers throughout the day.
And secondly is the delivery of the insight. There should be a focus on actionable insights. One thing Sormaz mentioned in relation to this was how shot map’s or xG, as interesting as they are are not actionable, but rather used to flag certain things.
Finally he stressed the importance of delivering data in the context with benchmarks if possible. By giving context to what data means e.g if a player is averaging 80% of their forward passes, what is the league average and where does this place them amongst their peers, then we are able to see how valuable it is. Again this was a theme that popped up throughout the day.
David Slemen Elite Performance Partners, and Christoph Biermann author
David Slemen was the first speaker invited to the stage by Mladen Sormaz and he is the co-founder and Managing Director of Elite Performance Partners (EPP). Slemen focused on recruitment and how his company are hired by clubs to help recruit, specifically with Head Coaches. To give context to the importance of changing attitudes for recruitment within football, he mentioned talking to one club who had admitted to looking at a famous betting website to see who they had as favourites for the vacant manager’s position to give them ideas.
