Tactical Insights Day

Leicester City will host a Tactical Insights Conference at the King Power Stadium (link) on Wednesday 19 February, 2020. This is the second Insights conference at the club. The first conference This “was a culmination of six months hard work from those within the analysis department and club”. The Insights day aimed to provide an educational basis for the discussion of tactical approaches in football (link).

I thought it was a great innovation in open sharing and mirrored developments at the Barça Innovation Hub (link). A perspective on the work underway at Leicester appeared in November 2018 when the post of Head of Fooball Analytics was advertised at Leicester (link). Mladen Sormaz was appointed to the position (link).

I am delighted to see developments at Leicester and Barça as I am firmly of the view that open sharing of data and processes is the new competitive edge. This open sharing is happening in rugby league too with Castleford Tigers. In the most recent Analysis Pro newsletter, Josh Bryan shared news of an event on 20th January when Castleford Tigers hosted an evening sharing insights to their performance analysis processes. There is a video of the evening that is available introduced by Ste Mills, the Head of Analysis at Castleford (link). It was the second such evening at Castleford.

The advertisement for the Leicester day observes “in a progressive and fast-moving industry that continues to show its undoubted value to the world of professional sport, this conference is the perfect opportunity for Performance Analysts, data scientists and coaches to continue their own professional development, make key contacts and improve their knowledge and skill set”. My hope is that a “progressive and fast-moving industry” can demonstrate the openness characteristic of open educational initiatives that are central to our discussion of on-going learning.

The program at Filbert Street is available (link) and can be downloaded as a pdf file. The schedule includes presentations from:

  • Paul Balsom and Mladen Sormaz (Leicester City)
  • David Slemen (Opportunities in a data driven era I)
  • Jordi Fernández (An integrative analytical approach)
  • Lisa Fallon(Converting data to match winning margins)
  • James Krause (Analytical approaches in an Academy environment)
  • German FA (Integrative analytical approach II)
  • Sportlogiq (Integrative analytical approach III)

News of the event also includes profiles of the presenters (link). The Football Association will accredit 6 hours CPD for those attending the Tactical Insights conference.

I am hopeful that the gender balance in the conference might change. If we are to be “a progressive and fast-moving industry” we need to address the gender imbalance at such conferences.

Photo Credits

All Leicester images are from the Tactical Insights blog post (link).

Ste Mills, Head of Analysis at Castleford (link)

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