Mohammed Amin Lamptey
With the advent of technology, soccer practitioners and especially performance analysts collect a wide range of data to analyse and help improve coach, player, and team performance.
As a soccer practitioner, you are expected to collect authentic data before and during a football match and evaluate performance in a variety of ways depending on the level of competition.
In modern football, data-driven insights are crucial for enhancing performance and gaining a competitive advantage. Performance analysis with accurate data will help to provide objective and actionable insights that can help coaches, teams, and players to improve and not destructive criticism or condemnation.
Some of the basic metrics you need to know and apply in a football match performance evaluation are as follows:
1. Team possession: High possession of the ball can indicate control over the game and ability to dictate the pace and neutralise an opponent
2. Passing accuracy: Accurate passing is very vital for dominating possession and building attacking players to convert half chances into full chances.
3. Defensive metric: Good tackles, interceptions, and clearance are crucial for defensive evaluation.
4. Midfield metric: Effective communication among defenders’, midfielders and attackers is vital to help midfielders dictate possession and provide accurate passes to strikers.
5. Short on target :This metric reflects the effectiveness of a team offensive play.
Payer statistics:
1. Distance covered: sprint, speed, and stamina. By tracking these statistics, practitioners can assess physical performance and identify areas of improvement of a player.
2. Match event: Important information during a match such as tackles, goals, assists, interceptions, fouls, and set pieces. These indicators provide a comprehensive view of the game and help in evaluating both individual and team performance.
3. Positional data: tracking the positions and movements of players throughout the match can help understand players’ roles, tactical disposition, tactical execution, tactical awareness, and tactical discipline.
In modern football:
It is important to state that experts have revealed that in modern football performance analysis, data-driven insights are pivotal for enhancing performance and gaining a competitive edge. Performance analysts must rely heavily on accurate and verifiable data to help provide objective and actionable insights for teams and players to improve on their performance. By applying accurate data, performance analysts or football practitioners can uncover game patterns, make informed decisions, and optimize game strategies.
Performance analysts play a crucial role in modern football by helping teams maximise their performance through data-driven insights and not emotional and unverifiable thoughts.
The Loop would want to urge all football practitioners in Ghana and beyond to consider this piece as a clarion call for a reset of how football matches, coaches, and players are evaluated before, during, and after football matches.
It’s not too late for all our sports desks in the country to help facilitate for some sports journalists to go into this very important area to help minimise harm on how we some times destructively criticise our coaches, players and teams.
Football we say is the passion of the nation, but we should not allow our ulterior motives, personal interests, and emotions to lead us to the level of mediocrity and condemnation of innocent individuals.
Source: Mohammed Amin Lamptey