We are proud to be part of Indian team in the FIFA U17 Worldcup for their performance analysis.  One of our senior football analyst – Aravind was part of the squad and here is the brief overview on this role as an analyst.

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I was the analyst of the Indian U17 team in the FIFA U17 World cup. It was a great experience and a huge honour to be part of a national team. More importantly, being in a FIFA World cup was a dream come true. I have briefly explained my role in the team.

Lessons from training

Learning starts in training. Every training session was recorded and showed to the coaches. Sometimes stats had to be collected depending on the drills. Depending on the coach’s requirements, certain events in the training had to be shown to the players in a video session on the very next day before their next session. Both positive and negative things from the training were shown. Correction of mistakes is the process of learning while showing the positive aspects boost the team morale. Some events like poor positioning, choice of pass, decision making and body position may not be felt by a player during that time. They realize it only when they are shown the videos later. Seeing yourself from a different perspective definitely helps in self-improvement. Especially since it was an U17 team, there were lessons after every session.

Pre-match opponent analysis

Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the opponent is the main job of any football analyst. I looked at all the matches of our opponents USA, Colombia and Ghana from their respective qualifying campaigns and analyzed their strong and weak points. The requirements of different coaches are different, but one common requirement for any coach in the world would be set-pieces. A single set-piece can change a game, maybe an entire tournament too. All the setpeices were analyzed and shared with the coaching staff. The team was informed of all the various set-piece patterns of the opposition.

Post-match analysis

The day after the match, I discussed with the coaches about the good and bad things that happened. The match would be coded into different clips according to their requirements. We also looked at what the stats say about the match. Then depending on the time and mental state of the players, the coaches would make a decision of when to show the positives and the negatives.

Performance analysis is one of the Key areas which enable teams to study their opponents, examine their own performance and video plays a key role in this.