Performance Technology Series - Players’ Development
When you work with younger teams, there’s always this dichotomy, this division between result and development,” said Monchi. “I’ve always been firm on this. I’ve always been very consistent in showing people that the most important thing was player development. The results come later, because the more the player improves, the better the results will be.
Individual Development
One of the trends in modern sports is to individualize player development. This trend follows key findings of education-based research into how connecting learning to individual needs is key. The concept of an individual development plan (see example in the image below) has become widely adopted and, when executed well, demonstrates a clear link between the recruitment of the athlete/player and their continuing education program that is brought to life through their games program.
The implementation of video for players' training, the tracking of players’ progression on a regular basis, and the alignment of players' development with club and academy philosophy should turn it into a practical day-to-day model for athletes to follow.
This process should also be implemented for coaches, to make sure that all the staff at the club is involved in the analysis process, creating a shared ‘language’ across the entire organization that can help to optimize internal communications between departments, ultimately resulting in more streamlined workflows.
Player Empowerment
Whether a player is a young talent or an established professional, they will always seek and expect feedback from their coaches. But thanks to technology, a much more effective and scalable approach is possible: players and staff can review their own performances and see which areas they need to improve in.
In order to be fully involved in the analysis process, players need to adopt a growth mindset, constantly reviewing and analyzing their performances. Ultimately, you don’t want a squad of players waiting for the coach to tell them what they need to do, but instead a group of athletes capable of making their own decisions. And the quality of those decisions is heavily influenced by the analysis processes at the club.
The combined power of Hudl Sportscode and the integrated Hudl platform allows clubs to capture, analyze and share insights, empowering players to select clips to review on their own, and share comments and drawings with the coaching staff. Also, Wyscout can be used to review performance, get stats and also as a development tool to share content, send messages, and watch other players/leagues for inspiration.
Injury Risk
In the process of combining information to produce knowledge, Individual Development Plans should call out the potential injury risks of all shortlisted players. This will be provided by qualified practitioners and combined with other assessment metrics to aid decisions around training and match selection plus contract renewal, sale or termination. The role of technology is to increase the accuracy of medical assessments and the speed of information is available to key decision makers such as the Coach and Sporting Director. During the recruitment process, accurate playing data can also be used to detect gaps in playing history that could be explained by unreported injuries.
In other sports such as rugby, innovative performance analysts are working alongside medical staff, using video analysis software to assess on-field injuries and aid the management of return-to-play protocols. Injury identification and assessment are clearly a new level of value that analysts can provide.
Combining all this with evidence provided by companies such as Noisefeed can yield good results in the mitigation of risk.
The whole process and detail around identifying and assessing injuries has expanded exponentially in recent years and this is something implemented right through international and professional rugby across the globe.
