Marcelino García Toral is impressed without problems.
The Spanish coach has controlled ten groups in Spain, adding 3 in La Liga, over 23 years of career on the bench, triumphed in the last stages of European competitions, led the clubs to promotion and won the Spanish Cup. you can tell a lot of them.
But in 2014, a young educator-turned-entrepreneur showed Marcellin, then head coach of Villarreal CF, that he had never noticed before: new to global football analysis.
“He saw it and said in Spanish” this is the angels bomb “-” is the bomb. “Then I had to start my presentation for the third time for the athletic director. They were looking to signal and the corporation didn’t even merge. . »
Villarreal has become Metrica’s first client and, little by little, FC Barcelona, one of the world’s top-value clubs, becomes the second. Today, the company provides knowledge and video research to more than 80 football groups in 27 countries. national groups in Spain and Portugal.
This is an impressive adventure for a company that was founded around beer in an Amsterdam pub in 2013 through 3 football fans without paintings that delight in the industry.
Saavedra, from Spain, was reading for a PhD in neuroscience, knowledge to track the movement of mice and rats, when he met Argentines Bruno Dagnino and Enzo Angilletta. Dagnino, Technical Director of Metrica, investigated the decision-making behavior of humans and monkeys through The Search for Tracking Knowledge, while Angilletta, Chief Marketing Officer at Metrica, created a video producer. The trio have teamed up with football and, in combination with Saavedra, a FC Barcelona fan, a love shared by Argentine Lionel Messi.
“We saw what the media was doing with the follow-up data, which was a very fundamental analysis, and we wondered what the clubs were doing with that data,” says Saavedra, who, along with his two co-founders, maintains a “vast majority of shareholders” in the company. We saw that the clubs didn’t have the experience, they didn’t know what to do with that data. Football is our passion and science our training, and it is an opportunity to mix them.
The trio temporarily learned that when analyzing a performance, professional groups had to automatically identify key moments of the setting and its effects on players in an engaging way.
“We learned that everything had to be similar to the video,” Saavedra says. “You can do all the knowledge analyses you need, but at the end of the day, coaches and analysts need to see things with them. You can’t just show them a chart, they need to see examples of those clips that make up the chart.
“We have developed a knowledge-based video analysis solution. Simply put, (clubs) can surely visualize everything in the game with knowledge: the distance between the players, the speed of the players, all sorts of things. And we can also automate the detection of express stages of the game from knowledge. »
They knew they had something, but entering the historically closed world of professional football wasn’t easy. Many handwritten letters and personalized videos were sent to coaches and analysts before an interaction on Twitter leading to this first meeting with Villarreal.
Saavedra believes that the ease with which coaches and analysts can use the software, and the visualization for the players, is the key to the company’s success. “There is a broad set of rules and knowledge that research the software, but they just click buttons and watch videos. Or a table that summarizes the knowledge,” she says.
For larger clubs, capable of developing internal knowledge, it is possible to expand their own express club algorithms. For example, clubs that create their own DNA, or an express taste for the game, can use the software to compare game patterns between academy groups. or express players playing in the same position.
As elite clubs increasingly leverage generation and science for greater functionality information, Metrica is not only interested in offering larger teams.
This week, the company introduced Play through Metrica Sports Free, a video analysis tool that reflects the generation used through Metrica’s professional customers. The tool, a lightweight edition of Metrica’s “Elite” license, is available to everyone, anywhere. in the world.
Thanks to the learning of the device, any video can be “tracked” through the software, even matches filmed in a local park on a smartphone. The concept of the loose tool is to offer basic coaches and players the opportunity to analyze their matches by temporarily creating annotated clips and visualizations.
“We believe that we can provide a large-scale analysis solution to anyone in those days, to other people who have always dreamed of being able to do video analysis but have not found the solution,” says Saavedra.
“Unless you’re one of the most sensible departmental clubs in the world, you don’t have to do anything. Everything is too expensive and too inedible.
“We need to replace the total market. We know that there is a massive network of other people who can do an amazing task if they can have the right technology in their hands. Football is for everyone, so why can’t a team of friends playing in the park, or an academy of promising young people, use the same equipment as the foreign stars they idolize every weekend?
“Metrica Sports was founded through 3 football fans and we are proud that seven years later we can return anything to the base community. “
As a lead contributor to Forbes, I write about the gaming industry with a specific theme about the world’s most popular game: football(football).
As a lead contributor to Forbes, I write about the gaming industry with a specific theme about the world’s most popular game: football. My articles cover everything from monetary advances and analytical advances to interviews with the most productive players, club owners and managers. , investors and other attractive personalities of the game. I have written for publications such as BBC Sport, The Guardian, The Independent, FC Business and SBS The World Game. Also paintings for La Liga TV, Canopying Valencia, Levante UD and Villarreal. Follow me on Twitter at rob_kidd1 and see examples of my paintings on www. robertkidd. net