Wyscout a pioneer for analysis and insights

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Wyscout
Images credit: Wyscout

Founded from Genoa in 2004, Wyscout is an international platform based in Italy which specialises in football scouting, transfer dynamics, and match analysis – regarded as one of the most used technological services in football.

Matteo Campodonico, a co-founder of Wyscout, is a former amateur footballer in Italy and upon early retirement was inspired by his playing days and his coach’s methodology. Along with Simone Falzetti, they brought Wyscout to life.

Initially, along with their colleague Piermaria, they started with filming and editing local matches – with the emergence of DVD softwares in 2004, they turned their hobby into an international business platform. Wyscout was started with the purpose to provide a set of innovative technological products for video data editing along with information on players, competition, matches, and plenty more. Through these products, football organisations are able to have an advanced view of athletes’ performances, trends of play, strategy, and more.

Since 2004, they have been pioneers in providing video analysis tools and digital databases for football operations and have aided coaches, teams, and players in their performance as well as in dealing with the football world.

Wyscout possesses one of the widest football video archives in the world, ensuring they have the most advanced information on football matches, players, teams, and competitions. This extends to major European leagues such as Premier League, Bundesliga, Ligue 1, La Liga, and Serie A, through to various youth competitions. Across the globe, more than 250 football completions are analysed. Over 200 football games are uploaded every week and Wyscout analysts segment the match data into thousands of short and easy-to-find video clips. Professional reports, rankings, searching tolls, and other advanced statistics enable football organisations to track and measure every detail.

Wyscout’s services include providing information, statistics needed to organise the day-to-day operations. Performance Analysts can measure and analyse players’ development, while heads of scouting can build travel schedules for scouts across the globe with the help of Wyscout data. Football organisations can monitor and plan to optimise their performance.

Wyscout data enables clubs to analyse opponents and individual matchups along with, managing events and enhancing the capabilities of technical teams. Advanced search situated on Wyscout’s innovative database after analysing a large amount of data in a few quick seconds offers over 100 filters to find the right player.

WyscoutThrough Wyscout data, clubs can use this for websites and social media to create content based on stats of any player, team, and coach’s performance. Integration of communication mechanisms, along with developing technical skills, is made easier by the constant update of data after every match. Coaches and video analysis teams are able to share videos, data, stats, etc with all technical staff within the football club ensuring, efficiency and alignment of the club’s vision for future outcomes. Adjusting and comparing numbers and videos at any time during the season ensures accurate analysis for any occasion to micro-manage players’ performance and work with them to develop it.

Wyscout allows football clubs to process travel schedules, policies, agendas, medical exams, training, diet programs, etc and can be integrated into internal software to improve efficiency. Scouting networks have access to high-quality analysed data of over 450,000 football players and over 220,000 catalogued games. Wyscout’s range of products aids clubs and football federations to create one digital database for videos, stats, and player/competition/match information.

Federations and clubs in minor footballing countries can create private archives to store statistics and other data, ensuring the development of technical elements of any minor/youth tournament and league across the globe. This provides custom resources for referee federations to improve adaptability and preparedness to games along with promoting and managing player portfolios to push clubs and federations to build a good network list.

Wyscout’s talent centre products are designed to collect data of under 21 players who have played in the first team for at least 20% of total minutes in the current season. This provides clubs and organisations to scroll through lists of debutants and analyse reports from the best youth and be able to discover the best young talents in the world – along with browsing global talents by filtering values like geographical region, birth date, market value, minutes, and matches played and plenty more.

Overall Wyscout is intuitive, smart, easy, and has evolved since its inception in 2004 to enhance the performances of the teams, day by day. Wyscout has an established structure and stands on the pillars of innovation and technology.

Over its course, Wyscout has become the reference point of football professionals and emerged as an enormous digital footballing database that has contributed massively to the globalisation of football.

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FIFPRO demands governance reform after FIFA’s FFE failure

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Image credit: BBC Sport

While FIFA cancelled plans to move forward with FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE), FIFPRO are demanding change at the top of football’s global governing body.

‘Abuse of power’

The plan to sell minority stakes in future FIFA competitions to private investors brought intense criticism from fans across the world.

Governing bodies including UEFA (Europe), CONCACAF (North America, Central America and the Caribbean) and the AFC (Asia) rallied against FFE and FIFA President Gianni Infantino, leading to a crisis meeting in Morocco to determine Infantino’s seemingly untenable position at the head of world football governance.

The meeting, however, confirmed Infantino will remain as FIFA President going forward – a decision which has since prompted FIFPRO to make their stance clear: governance reform is a must.

“The withdrawal of FFE was inevitable. But withdrawing the proposal does not erase what it revealed,” the organisation said via an official statement on the FIFPRO website.

“A plan capable of permanently altering the ownership and governance of the FIFA World Cup, and commercialising the competitions built by generations of players, was conceived in secrecy, negotiated behind closed doors and brought to the brink of agreement before the FIFA Council, the Member Associations, players and football’s recognised stakeholders even knew it existed.”

“That is not merely a governance failure. It is a profound abuse of presidential power.”

 

How to navigate governance post-FFE

As reiterated by FIFPRO, the FFE controversy arrived a mere few weeks after a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between FIFA and the player’s union marked an optimistic step to a more collaborative future.

But what was previously a step in the right direction, now seems an insufficient policy to protect players – and the wider landscape of world football – from future unilateral decisions at the top.

FIFPRO’s demands – agreed upon by the Presidents of all FIFPRO regional divisions across Africa, Asia/Oceania, Europe, South America and Central & North America – include measures such as:

  • Using the Global Social Dialogue Platform as fundamental part of FIFA’s governance
  • Engagement with stakeholders over future decisions affecting the professional game
  • Voting rights for professional football’s stakeholders on the FIFA Council
  • Structural reforms to prevent future unilateral decisions

The message from FIFPRO is therefore clear. Now is not the time to rest on criticism; stakeholders in the professional game must encourage action and reform.

“These reforms are now indespensable. But they are the responsibility of the future, not an absolution of the past,” FIFPRO continued via their official statement.

“The players did not create this crisis. They will insist that football emerges from it with stronger institutions, stronger safeguards and leadership worthy of the trust the game demands.”

Referees to improve consistency with new UEFA guidelines

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Image credit: UEFA

In a meeting between Chief Refereeing Officers within UEFA and its 55 national associations, enhancing consistency and clarity underpinned the principle goals for the upcoming season.

Improving officiating

Referees – and particularly the usage of VAR – are often at the centre of post-match debates.

As the introduction of new technology into match officiating increases year-on-year, referees are in the spotlight more than ever before. The expectation was that more technology would decrease errors and controversy, but the opposite has proven to be the case.

Which is why the agreement and alignment between European nations marks a key step in the future of match officiating; the meeting between UEFA, its national associations and a representative of the International Football Association Board (IFAB) displays intention and commitment to ensuring future in-game decisions are clear, not controversial.

Meeting chair and UEFA Director for Refereeing, Roberto Rosetti, outlined why the agreement will have a vital impact on the future of European football, both domestically and internationally.

“The fact that all 55 national associations and UEFA have agreed on guidelines towards a more consistent approach to the application of the Laws of the Game marks a significant milestone,” Rosetti said.

“It will help improve the understanding of refereeing decisions among players, clubs and supporters and all stakeholders in the game.”

“For the popularity of football it is essential to remove all doubt from the game and ensure that the laws are applied with clarity.”

 

Limiting technology use

A widespread criticism of match officiating in recent years is the regularity with which VAR intervenes and interrupts match tempo.

The issue, however, is not that VAR can review decisions – in fact, this summer’s FIFA World Cup displayed an effective use of VAR during a case of mistaken identity, in which a player received a yellow card offence for a foul committed by an opposition player. In this regard, VAR was a vital part of ensuring a simulation offence did not go unpunished.

Frustration, however, grows when the use of VAR goes beyond checking “clear and obvious” errors. Lengthy replays, a multitude of angle-checking clips and the disruption of game flow all contribute to feelings of frustration among fans.

But recent amdendments aim to limit this in the upcoming season. VAR is an essential part of fair officiating, but responsibility must lie with the referee.

The new rules introduced by the IFAB are available here, with further initiatives to follow from UEFA in the coming weeks.

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