Two of the best all-time coaches in Dutch football, Louis van Gaal and Johan Cruijff argued about this for years already. How relevant are statistics in world football nowadays? Is the human eye still as important as it once was, when looking at the potential of a young talent? Cruijff argued that computers cannot see how a player controls and touches the ball, while Van Gaal is very much in favour of using modern techniques to see what players should improve on.

It is obvious that statistics are gaining more and more ground in modern football. Websites such as whoscored.com, OptaSports and Squakwa are getting more popular. Opponent set pieces such as corner kicks are heavily studied and analysed prior to matches and penalty shootouts are prepared before important cup matches as well. In the video below, you can see the latest final of the Johan Cruijff Cup, in which you can see that Feyenoord players continually tell goalkeeper Bijlow where the PSV player usually shoots their penalties. Bijlow guesses the right corner almost every time, even when the player still scores.

SciSports, a Dutch firm founded in Enschede, started a statistics firm with the intention to help clubs scout for new players that would not be possible if scouting was done the old-fashioned way: based on intuition. Their database features over 300.000 active football players, have deals with several Dutch clubs to do Data Intelligence Analysis (e.g. Heracles has 13 camera’s available for SciSports for 3D-analysis) and in 2016 they assisted with 13 transfers in the Eredivisie. A prime example of their scouting prowess is Wout Weghorst, who had to leave then Second Division side FC Emmen because he was deemed not good enough; but SciSports advised Eredivisie club AZ to sign him and he has now made his debut in the Dutch national team as well, playing three matches.

SciSports recently also acquired deals with clubs outside of the Netherlands, such as clubs in England and recently they signed a deal with French giant Olympique Lyonnais.

So in the end, who is right? Can computers scout players that humans would not be able to do? And vice versa? Would the 13-year old, growth-hormone deficient Lionel Messi have been scouted by SciSports’ technology? I have always been on Cruijff’s side of the debate, but technology is only getting better and better..

Sources:

https://www.ad.nl/nederlands-voetbal/nederlands-scisports-verandert-transferwereld~a989ef20/
http://www.scisports.com/

While Augmented Reality (AR) might still be a couple of years off, the imagined possibilities are endless.

Walking down the street and seeing someone you might recognize from years ago, but you are not completely sure where from; with AR, you could be able to use facial recognition and pull up their Facebook or LinkedIn profile instantly and find out what links the two of you potentially have or have had.

Or visiting a foreign country, where you do not speak the language and you plan to visit a local museum with descriptions of paintings not available in English. AR would be able to assist in instantly translating that local language into your own native tongue, allowing you to perform activities in countries that now might be impossible to do appropriately.

Of course AR will also be a major cause for privacy concerns. In the above mentioned example of the recognisable face walking down the street, does that person even want to be able to be tracked like this? How can AR systems make sure that privacy regulations such as the newly introduced General Data Protection Regulation are not being violated? How do people know that they are not secretly filmed? Google Glass ran into the same issues as well and ultimately failed.

Google Glass 2.0 is now focusing on improving the work place in factories. Glass for instance tells workers what kind of bolt is needed or can zoom in on an object to provide more details. Or a quality checker can say “Not OK” while inspecting a unit and it will immediately notify the superiors. A paradigm shift from public to private markets might be what AR needs to establish itself in society.

One thing is clear: AR has the potential to change everything.

Sources:

https://twitter.com/keiichiban/
https://www.fastcompany.com/90167172/leap-motions-virtual-wearables-may-be-the-future-of-computing
https://www.wired.com/story/google-glass-2-is-here/