Men's Soccer: Pitch Points
September 02, 2009 10:11 AM | General
September 2, 2009
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| Assistant coach Bryan Green reviewing tape from the WVU-Virginia exhibition.
WVU Sports Communications photo |
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Leading up to a match, many people know how difficult life can be for a student-athlete. Not only are they asked to attend class and fulfill their educational duties, but athletes also must practice, hit the weight room, and even more so, study film.
What many people fail to take into account is the amount of work and time the coaching staff must put in in order to prepare a team for its upcoming contest. Fortunately, the West Virginia University men’s soccer team can benefit from not only some of best facilities and coaching staff’s in the nation, but also arguably one of the best scouting software programs in the world.
Just this year, the WVU coaching staff elected to use Prozone software – a program used by only seven other collegiate programs in the nation and premier clubs around the globe, such as Arsenal, Manchester United, Real Madrid, the English National Team, U.S. Soccer and multiple teams in Major League Soccer – just to name a few clubs. Based upon its impressive client list, it’s easy to tell that this program is only used by the elite.
What separates the program from others on the market is that it is tailored to one sport only.
“This program is specific to soccer. It’s not a version of another piece of software that’s been made to fit soccer,” coach Marlon LeBlanc says. “The fact that the best clubs in the world use this software – I think it’s a pretty good barometer for how beneficial it is to the players, teams and managers. It’s huge for team development, player development, and it’s more specific to the needs and requirements of a modern soccer coach.”
The software has numerous capabilities. Before even reaching the video portion for scouting purposes, a coach can pull up statistical information through MatchViewer on the entire team, or even an individual player. An extremely detail-oriented program, an athlete can see how many passes they had in a game, the length of a pass to a teammate, or from where on the field they took shots. It also breaks up the field into regions, showing where players often were on the field, where they delivered passes, or even which players they passed to throughout the span of a match.
“It specifically analyzes every single touch that a player has, whether it’s successful or unsuccessful, or if it went forward or if it went backward,” assistant coach Bryan Green says. “Now we don’t have to watch every one of his clips and analyze them, but we can pick out successful passes and say, ‘Good job,’ or unsuccessful passes and say, ‘This is what we need to work on.’ If it’s a specific area that he’s not successful in, then we can go and focus on that in training so he can add that to his skills for game time so he’s more successful.”
From there, the coaches can have a meeting with an individual or an entire unit, such as the midfield, and actually show them video segments from the game. As Green points out, once the clips are cut and stored, any member of the coaching staff can recall the clips without having to sort through all of the game footage. While this might seem like a minor inconvenience, having this ability saves time and allows players to focus on their individual or group’s development.
“The information we’re giving them is more specific, and the amount of time that they have to actually look at that information is a lot shorter,” LeBlanc adds. “The fact that we’re able to give them that information in bits and pieces helps them digest more and be able to put that into practice a lot more readily.”
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| From coach Marlon LeBlanc's office - a view of Prozone software on a flat-screen TV.
WVU Sports Communications photo |
When the tape is broken down for each athlete, players can take a CD home with them to watch their performance. To show how much time the coaching staff puts in, Green says that coding a game takes around 10-12 hours for a 90-minute contest. Fortunately for his eyes, Green is not the only one spending time on tape.
“We have games split into two halves,” Green adds. “Assistant coach Mark Carr, Brandon Daniels, our volunteer assistant, and I take turns coding the game. All the time put in is very well spent once we’re watching the video with the guys. Once we watch it, it’s a very efficient and effective tool for teaching.”
Although the staff will always have the footage at their disposal, maybe the biggest bonus of all is the fact that now players can put their clips on their iPod and watch them as they’re walking to class or sitting on the team bus, traveling to a road match.
“I think it’s a now-generation,” Green says with a smile. “The easier it is to access things, whether it’s for use or convenience, they’re going to watch it more and every time they watch it, they’re getting information that will help them out as players and help us out as a team. I think for the most part, they’re going to watch it on a laptop because they have a bigger screen, but they’ll watch it on their iPod as well. Every time they watch it, it’s beneficial to us.”
The WVU coaching staff understands that in order to be the best, it must prepare like the best in the world. Facilities such as Dick Dlesk Soccer Stadium, the Caperton Indoor Practice Facility and the WVU Soccer Practice Fields are surely great tools for player development. With the program’s latest addition, the video scouting software, the staff has ensured that it is doing everything in its power to push WVU to the top of Division I soccer.
