The FIFA Football Language

The FIFA Football Language

Really quick one this week. I don't normally have a Sunday post dedicated solely to a podcast episode but I felt this one needed sharing more!

I recently sat down and had a super interesting chat with Chris Loxston who was responsible for creating the FIFA Football Language and heading up with whole analysis and insights division at FIFA's headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland.

If you have an interest in football and data then I think you could find real value from this.

A few things that I was impressed by:

  • How new analysts were trained and even given learning plans to up skill them in the areas they needed work on.
  • How a match would take 20+ analysts to code as each analyst was given a specific player.
  • The sheer number of people involved from performance analysis, data analysts, data scientists etc.
  • The different off-the-ball metrics that were used to determine a players performance.

We even spoke about how the role of the analyst has changed (and continues to change) and how artificial intelligence and machine learning will impact things too.

Anyway, I will let you check it out for yourself as there is plenty to learn from Chris who has had the opportunity to work within analysis and coaching all over the world.

You can watch the full video below (49 minutes) but I have done you the courtesy of splitting it up into 'chapters' so you can easily click on the timestamp to get the exact point that interests you.


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