Analysis on the international stage
How Spiideo supports the Sweden Women’s National Team
Having made back-to-back Olympics finals and placed third at the 2019 World Cup, Sweden’s women’s national soccer team currently sits second in FIFA’s world rankings — it’s highest placement since records began.
The side’s success is a combination of different factors: the arrival of head coach Peter Gerhardsson in 2017, the talented squad at his disposal, and the Swedish Football Association’s commitment to improving match analysis, says Anders Eriksson, Match Analyst for the women’s national team.
In recent years, the SvFF has placed greater importance on analyzing performance and gathering insight to deliver useful feedback to coaches and players, from youth level to the senior sides.
The role of video in effective match analysis
While Sweden’s strength in regard to match analysis has always been its workflow, it has made considerable improvements over the last few years in how to use video in its communication with their players.
Breaking down the play, presenting insights to players and coaches is a necessity. Statistics are important, but there are few things that work as well as a video or an image
The SvFF implemented Spiideo Perform to capture, prepare and analyze video footage to support tactical analysis and player development.
“Video is a central part of how we communicate with our players, individually, in groups, or for the whole team,” Eriksson explains. “We always share our training and matches on a common platform so players get access immediately after to review the team’s performance and their own actions, such as finishing, passing and defensive play, so they can analyze and gain insights in an objective way.”
A game-changing video analysis solution
Using walkie-talkies, Eriksson is able to communicate with the bench constantly throughout the game, sharing clips to the coaching team’s iPad device to assist their tactical decisions and provide video-enhanced feedback to players during breaks in play.
The absolute best thing about Spiideo is its availability — the simplicity of starting a recording and watching it live,” Eriksson says. “Many people underestimate having direct access to live video, but it makes the job of providing direct feedback so much easier
The AI-driven future of performance analysis
As new technology and solutions are developed, the insight that analysts, coaches and players can gain from video will only improve. Artificial intelligence will play a central role in the analysis process moving forward, Eriksson predicts, while interest continues to grow in data analytics.
“I think that the introduction of tracking data is important, to be able to link event data to tracking data and thus be able to describe the game in a better way for our players and the team,” – Anders Eriksson, Match Analyst
Such innovations are already emerging. Last year, Spiideo Perform became the world’s first video analysis platform to offer automated live tagging and player tracking with the release of AutoData.
Using cutting-edge AI technology, AutoData automatically tracks each individual player and generates event data from the live video feed. Without assistance, the system can detect game events such as goals, passes and set pieces, as well as physical data such as distance covered and high-intensity runs. With this data, analysts like Eriksson can effortlessly extract clips, stats and insight to enhance their analysis and feedback.