“Football must stop hiding behind tradition and revolutionize. American football is much more technologically advanced than soccer. The quarterback has a headset to listen to his coach, we absolutely need it. As a soccer coach, you can get an incredible amount of that.” – Julian Nagelsmann 2021
The recent comment from Julian Nagelsmann, head coach of Bayern Munich, has sparked an interesting conversation in football. The reception has been split. Some argue that this would kill football, while others are more welcoming of a transformation.
The NFL, on the one hand, is a strategy game with plenty of stops in play to rearrange their strategy. It is also important to be able to switch strategy quickly to surprise the opponents. Another point to note, it is mainly the quarterback making calls of strategy during plays. Therefore, an earpiece to communicate the strategies from the coaches make sense. Football, on the other hand, is a game focused on the ingenuity of the moments with only one stop in play at halftime. Its focus is on tactical systems where all players on the pitch must adapt to a wide range of scenarios. Therefore, it makes less sense to have the captain wear an earpiece when they are already drilled in the tactical system. Of course, some football managers make constant adjustments throughout the game and might benefit from that. However, the players could get distracted (just imagine having Guardiola in your ear the entire game) and it is not as easy to get the message across to all players unless the ball is out of play for a goal-kick or a corner.
The earpiece idea might work, although it seems a bit farfetched for football at the moment. What football could take from Nagelsmann’s comments is to investigate other possible ideas or technological advancements to enhance the game. One idea, taken from the NFL, is for the referees to explain the decision to the crowd especially with the newly implemented system VAR. This could increase accountability and transparency of the decision. Another idea is the detail in set-pieces American football has. Or learn from track and field when it comes to the scientific nature of human strength and conditioning. Some even argue that the length of the game is too long and should be cut down to 60 minutes with stoppage of the clock every time the ball is out of play (not the biggest fan of this idea as football should be about fluidity, although it would stop players from dragging out time). There are plenty of sports to take lessons and inspiration from. The difficult aspect is how it will change the game, as the outcome of change is difficult to predict.
Over the years football has changed and become more professional. Players hiring dieticians. Clubs hiring analytical experts for player development or to find the hidden gems before everyone else. VAR is used to call out important incorrect decisions from the on-field referee (still not optimal). Additionally, more metrics are used to describe how a game is played out like xG (expected goals) or xA (expected assists) as football is starting to learn from other sports like basketball. It will be interesting to see how the game continues to develop. What do you think will be the next technological implementation?
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Very good article about how technological advances affect football Sigvald. I am a football fan since I was really young and to be honest I always was a bit sceptical towards changes on the way the game is played. But we certainly can not overlook the effect that new technologies could have in the footbal industry. For example as you mention VaR and Goal line technology have made the game more fair and no one can deny this. In the past a common belief was that referees used to favor big clubs but now this belief is obsolete due to the new technologies adopted the last few years.
From my point of view I am curious to see how technology will affect the tactical aspect of football. With the use of data analytics clubs will employ data analysts in order to be able to access vast amounts of data and gain valuable insights. By this they will improve and adjust their game play to each team they face. Furthermore by collectiong and analyzing data in real-time systems will be able to make suggestions and provide to coaches valuable insights during the time of a football match. To go even further do you believe that coaches will be replaced by artificial intelligence systems in the future?
Thanks for your inspirational post! Since I’m a football fan myself, I have also questioned technological implementations into my favourite sports. The introduction of the VAR was really messy and is still not working perfectly. I think that every technological innovation is just as good as the people using it. Regarding VAR we often observed that referees didn’t look on some scenes that they had access to or that the VAR didn’t give advice to the referee although he/she should have done so.
I don’t think that the earpieces suggested by Nagelsmann would be a progressive innovation in football. As you have mentioned, it would rather disturb than help. However, I am very open to the clock, stopping the time every time when the ball is not in play for longer than 5 seconds. A lot of teams are dragging out time and I feel that is super annoying as a fan (even if it is your team leading). Handball has implemented such a technology a long time ago and it works easily. Instead of earpieces I would propose to do time-outs, e.g. each head coach could use 1 timeout session during the game. This would allow them to give tactical advise and could also be used to interrupt the game when the opponent team is playing strong (to disturb their flow and save the own team).
Great post Sigvald! Myself have been a soccer fan for all my life and have played soccer all my life as well.
As you described I think that soccer is a game that lacks technological developments if you compare it to some other sports. However I think that soccer is a game were technological developments like you mentioned are a bit harder to implement. The game is played on a very large pitch were most players are spread across the field. This makes it harder if for example the captain wears an earpiece and get tactics from the coach, to inform the rest of the team as well about the new plans. The basketball field for example is much smaller. Next as you mentioned, soccer does not have as much stoppages as much as for example American Football.
However, I do think that in some cases there could be new technological improvements on the soccer field, next to the VAR, the goal line technology and al the data analytics that soccer already has.
The areas were soccer could improve are for example: fair play time, have a technology to improve this.
The VAR can also have some improvements, because it is not properly used and overused sometimes. For example at field hockey they only use the VAR when teams ask for it and the teams can only do this a few times. When a team is wrong and the VAR decides against the team, they lose their right to call up on the VAR. These kind of rules can improve our current system.
So overall I agree with you, I just think that some things are harder to implement and we can use different rules to improve the game.