The background
I was asked by the lovely people at Nelson Bostock to write a couple of case studies detailing how the Football Association was using Google Cloud and data analytics to prepare its teams for international tournaments.
It’s not often that I get to combine my twin loves of technology and football (apart from my weekly whinges about how poor implementation of VAR is spoiling the game) – so getting to work on these pieces was an absolute pleasure.
The results
Here’s a brief excerpt from one of the pieces:
‘No two football matches are the same. The conditions. The opposition. What’s at stake. Each match provides a unique set of challenges, impacting different players in different ways. This unpredictability is what we love about the beautiful game – but it makes preparation difficult.
Getting ready for an international tournament is harder still. International windows leading up to a World Cup generally include 2 or even 3 games squeezed into a 10 day period – which doesn’t leave much time to work on intricate tactical planning or conditioning.’
And here’s another, diving into the technology behind the preparation:
‘Every minute will count, which means automation is key. While BigQuery is the core product that the team use to store and manipulate their data, it’s just one part of a suite of Google Cloud products and APIs that help them to easily turn data into insight. Training performance data and physical measures such as diet, sleep, recovery and heart rate are captured and fed through Python, which links straight into BigQuery via its Pub/Sub functionality. Using native BigQuery connectors, it’s then transformed into visual reports and dashboards that convey insights in a meaningful, tangible format.’
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