Introduction/ background of performance analysis
This website will critically analyse performance analysis within football and will do so based on findings at my own grassroots side Plymouth Trophyman under 9's. Performance analysis has of course always been a crucial part of all sports, including football. O’Donoghue (2010) defines performance analysis as the investigation of actual sports performance, with the aim essentially being to develop a clear understanding of sports that can inform decision-making, enhance performance and inform the coaching process (Hodges and Franks, 2002).
Performance analysis has been heavily aided by the great strides that have been made in the last several decades in video analysis. Before this revolutionary technology pioneers such as Rudolph Laban and Charles Reep would carry out statistical analysis using just a pen and pencil, at the time this was seen as a major stride forward in performance analysis. The 'Reep system' was widely acknowledged and used by professional club Wolverhampton Wanderers and many other clubs in the mid 1950's (Reep, 1982 as cited in Reilly et al 2011). |
A major disadvantage in using this method however has to be the fact it is very hard to do this accurately as when looking down to tally onto a checklist the coaches concentration is split, potentially missing other entry worthy data. Another factor is if coaching alone the coach would also be limited in what feedback they could give and how much of the 'bigger picture' they could take in due to their focus being elsewhere. Ian Franks began using video analysis in 1980 and this was around the time that the technology began it's major impact in football with the 1982 football world cup being analysed using this revolutionary technology which was followed by a conference in Liverpool in 1983.
It was after this event that the likes of Mike Hughes embarked on a journey which would result in the use of video technology eventually becoming a crucial component in performance analysis (Mcgarry et al, 2013). In 1998 after years of technological development by the likes of Anoine David in France Prozone was established opened their first office in Leeds. Their first client was Derby county football club and in the next two years they would add the likes of Manchester |
United and the England National team to their growing clientele.
In 2006 Real Madrid joined forces with Prozone and FC Barcelona followed suit in 2010 (Prozone, 2014). One of the major factors in choosing my own grassroots side for this project was based on the fact that such illustrious clubs have been willing to pay vast amounts of money to use this technology. The reasoning was essentially that if it works for them at the top end why can it not work for a grassroots side at the bottom. Having said that Plymouth Trophyman do not have the funds to purchase Prozone so instead after several interersting lectures at university I opted to use Longomatch in order to analyse our game. Longomatch was first available in March 2010 and is a free software which allows users to code games/ sessions both live and post event with great features including zonal tagging and game statistics (Longomatch, 2014). I found using the software extremely beneficial and I will be encouraging the other age groups at our club which include under 8's, 10's, 11's, 12's and 14's (PTFC, 2014) to use it. This website will judge the impact of performance analysis against a whole range of different criteria. |