Videos with goals, plays compact and also data. Hard, accurate and precise data; With heat map, aerobic autonomy, cardiac recovery, muscle fatigue and any other interpretation that arises from the measurement history that the GPS captures. A footballer profile is no longer complete without that information.
There is a paradigmatic case. When Brighton came to Buenos Aires to take Alexis Mac Allisterthe president of Argentinos Juniors, Cristian Malaspinahe saw how the sale was drained, which seemed like a fact until the English accessed the midfielder’s metrics. They explained that the boy met all the requirements to be one of the inmates in his game system, except for the metrics: They did not reach the minimum that the sports management recommended.
This was the previous step through Boca: the English club would buy it if a goal was fulfilled, which was neither the amount of games or minutes played, expected goals or precision of the passes. To move on to Premier League, Mac Allister should improve the kilometers traveled on his heat map. Only in 2020 he made the suitcase for him, now, known. Figure of Liverpool and of the ARGENTINE SELECTION World Champion and Bicampeone of America.
“The data is the oil of football”he confirmed in a timely manner Nicolas EvansHead of Football Research and Standards of the FIFAin an interview to Nicolás Rotnitzky In the specialized portal BigData Sports. Where do that data come from? They are generated by the footballer, they are collected by a GPS and analyzes and combines with images a specialized team of the coaching staff.
Alexis Mac Allister had to improve his metrics to move on to the Premier League. And where are the GPS? The image can be repeated in any First Division match: when a player takes off his shirt, he seems to have a Lycra top underneath. Everyone is wearing what is it? The vest that holds that device that It can be worth between $ 200 and $ 1,000 and that all carry on the back. It is a GPS approved by FIFA that records each movement and accumulates a series of data that are interpreted in real time during a match.
But the future came a while and GPS is no longer what is most used in Europe. The latest is the optical trackeo -With the cameras, taking the entire game perimeters and the LPS: Local Position Systemaccording to the acronym in English, which shrinks the margin of error of 30 to 10 percent of the Global Positioning System (GPS) that has been developing more than 20 years in sport. The following are smaller chips inside the shirt.
But who is the owner of the data, the player or the club? Can the player refuse to use it? The optical tracking solves that dilemma that FIFPROthe soccer union worldwide, worked for each player to attend their right to carry their own data or make them absolutely private. In Misiones, for example, some children’s league clubs have already implemented them.
“We looked at the GPS data and last year we had a team measure, almost, from First National in terms of kilometers traveled. It cannot happen, in Argentine football the matches are equated ”synthesized in an interview with Banfield code the sports director of the Club del Sur del GBA, Mariano Andújar.
The bare scoundrel metrics. Photo: Sebastian Granata The matches that Banfield played this season account for the former goalkeeper’s sayings: now the team, although it is directed by another coach (Ariel Broggi), has a very different performance than the one who ended it 2024 among the worst of the worst of the Annual Table. There was a change of names, reduction of salary mass and a few arrivals. None has a glitter surname, but with metrics – invisible to anyone’s eyes and especially the fans – who began to make a difference.
GPS data – and the ability to interpret them – became fundamental at the time to face the passes market: only Boca and River have their wallet to concentrate more than half of the volume of money that moved in the summer transfers window. To the rest, the ingenuity has left … or the metrics that contains the device that the players charge, literally, on the back.
It is true, reluctant coaches to the use of technology. Néstor Gorosito It is one of the referents of the old school that defends a football with fewer technological applications. “I don’t need a GPS to know if a player is tired. If I give me that feeling, the GPS will confirm it to me, but it will not warn me that it is tired ”he explained Stocking cap in what constitutes a half truth. For now, -artificial intelligence already combines the hard data delivered by GPS -, the information only serves in a context. Without the ability to interpret them, they have no reason to be.
The interpretation of the history of a player and his measurements grant fundamental parameters for hiring: the GPS will not throw a name to reinforce a squad, but the data of a candidate can make it the chosen one. Money can be negotiated, performance no.
The GPS of the Bolivia GPS selection, fundamental to control the physical performance of the players in height. Photo Marcelo Carroll So know Platensefor having completed a series of sales unthinkable years ago injected the money into the last pass market. “GPS data tells, yes. They have to be at the levels that the teachers intend: for them they are decisive and weigh on the decision, but there are other factors ”explains the president of the Vicente López club, Sebastián Ordonez.
He squid method It includes metrics, but also other aspects. The sight is set in soccer players who have had a peak of performance and are below, with the aim of trying to recover or overcome it. “We do not look for players at their maximum performance because we do not have the money to pay them”Le explains Ordoñez a Clarionthat in the last passes market he tried to lower the age range of the campus.
“Boca and River have no problem buying. The rest we search and we offer players the perfect environment to relaunch their career and expand ”says the manager who knows that the stained glass window carries a new metric for the next movement of passes.