An app to analyze your opponents?

[Lazie]

.... months before the World Cup in Brazil began, every man in the German squad had access to an app on which the team's many analysts would post useful videos. Before the France-Germany quarterfinal, the analysts emphasized one video in particular: an apparently unremarkable scene of the Dutchman Daley Blind tracking his opponent in a Holland-Germany under-21s match in 2013.

You watch the video and forget it almost instantly: the German attack peters out, with the Dutch keeper easily picking up a low pass. But that's because Blind was doing something crucial: after two German players attempted a one-two pass, he didn't follow the ball but kept running with the German who had started the move, staying with him until the attack was dead.


It was exactly the right thing to do. The German analysts expected Blind's defensive ploy to be especially important against the French, whose soccer culture traditionally favors one-twos. The German players studied Blind, and then did as he did. They shut out the previously impressive French 1-0.
Before the semifinal against Brazil and the final against Argentina -- two other countries that like one-twos -- the players watched the Blind video again. When the German FA's chief data analyst Chris Clemens told this story to the Dutch journalist Michiel de Hoog, he even suggested a headline for his article: "How Daley Blind saved Germany's World Cup."


http://www.espnfc.us/blog/espn-fc-un...me-simon-kuper

[Lazie]

The genius of Messi?

When the game kicked off, the official said, "Watch Messi."

It was a puzzling sight. The little man was wandering around, apparently ignoring the ball. The official explained: "In the first few minutes he just walks across the field. He is looking at each opponent, where the guy positions himself, and how their defense fits together. Only after doing that does he start to play."

[Jangle]

I saw Carrick do something similar in the Liverpool game. He received the ball under pressure with about 3 Liverpool players, one already going in for the tackle, within close proximity of him. He shifted his body weight and turned back in the same direction that the ball was coming from when that wasn't the most logical or natural thing to do given the pressure that he was under. That one movement opened up the enter field to him and allowed him to dribble out of the ants nest and make the pass. The movement, you could see, was predetermined by a split second. This is was separates great players from ordinary. After getting himself out of trouble, his nature and first instinct was to pass the ball to start the attack and not to hold on to the ball and dribble up field.

[Gamma]

i was with him up to the paoint where he described rooney as "among the sharpest thinkers around" ....

i need to chew on that one!

[myYout]

Right!!, most effective when yuh can adjust instinctively like dat deh. Is one ting to learn di static tactics an strategy of yuh team, but is anodah fi apply instincts and creativity pan di spot, attributes weh very important to ah ballah.