The Saints are widely recognized as one of England’s premier academies for developing world-class footballers. This is how they use video to measure player development.
Natasha Patel offers insight into a holistic approach to video analysis in this three-part series.
Football clubs use video analysis to nurture talent and improve performance, but the best clubs are finding new and unique ways of using video to support the wider functions of the performance department.
With increasing numbers of players going on loan to clubs in every corner of the world, traditional scouting methods are no longer good enough. Players are now effectively multi-million pound assets and clubs need to be able to track their development when they’re away from their parent club.
Natasha Patel, former head of performance analysis at English Premier League club Southampton FC, tells us how they use Hudl to follow their players while they gain match experience at other clubs.
“Part of our loan player process is to keep tabs on the players week-to-week, so that’s through video” Patel said. “We’ll download their game, or we’ll be sent the game from that club, and through Sportscode we’ll look at that individual based on our KPI’s. [We’ll then] put them into categories—where they’re doing well and where they could do better on.
“We’ll database that for every individual player that’s out on loan to keep track of their performance.
“Over a 6 to 8 week period we’ll put a package together with scouting reports, any statistical information we have on them or any injury data, and we can send that through a movie organiser and Sportscode package out to relevant staff."
Want to learn how the international sports industry is using video analysis? Check out our resources page for more.
