Google is assisting England coach Gareth Southgate in selecting and monitoring promising players as the largest European football tournament approaches. One of his main tools is a player performance program developed by the Football Association, the governing body of English football, and Google. The platform aims to consolidate disparate data sources in one place so managers can track player performance effectively.
Southgate stated, "We have players in the Premier League, Bundesliga, and La Liga every weekend, and we need to be able to access those clips as quickly as possible, along with any data we can get from those matches." The platform contains thousands of minutes of video and statistics on everything from completed passes and shots on goal to fouls committed and distance covered, with data coming from sports analytics companies like Opta, recruitment platform Scout7, and even the BBC.
Southgate is under pressure from fans to deliver results from his England team in the European Championship, which kicks off in Rome on Friday, June 11, and ends at Wembley Arena in London on Sunday, July 11. England has never won the tournament, reaching the semifinals in 1968 in Italy and again on home soil in 1996, when they lost to Germany in a penalty shootout.
The data collected on England players goes far beyond their performance on the pitch and in training, also monitoring their sleep and mental health. The player performance platform also includes data recorded through internet-connected gym devices at the team's training ground near Birmingham.
The Director of Information at the Football Association mentioned that the Google-supported platform provides Southgate and other England coaches with new insights that they hope will allow them to thrive and win. He acknowledged that there are other cloud computing providers, such as Microsoft, Amazon, and IBM, and stated that the Football Association relies on some of them for various products. He praised Google for having open standards and greater flexibility, saying, "Google allows us to collaborate and integrate with those other cloud services effectively."
The Director of Information at the Football Association noted that the player performance platform for England was created by a small team of developers at the Football Association in collaboration with Google and other companies.
