Non-s(ci)ence

In many cases the midfield of a team plays a vital role in football competition and the quality of players might have a decisive role.

It seems like an ongoing debate if an academy can actually develop the next world class player and if that one (player) out of ??? (players) is actually worth the work or money from an economical side (having in mind that in some leagues the clubs must have an academy).

The footage below shows the pre-match warm-up of the Hamburger SV players before their game against SV Darmstadt '98.

As the title proposes, the video below shows the pre-march warm-up of the HSV goalkeeper.

The footage was taken before the game against SV Darmstadt '98 (2nd German division).

I was able to visit my one and only Bundesliga game for the closed 2016/2017 season.

Obviously, I brought my camera and took some footage of the goalkeeper warm-up of both teams.

Unfortunately it is not the entire warm-up as I focused on the teams later on. However, please enjoy the two videos below, the first one shows the FC Schalke and the second one the Eintracht Frankfurt goalkeeper warm-up.

The video below shows the pre-match warm-up of the german Bunesliga team Eintracht Frankfurt.

As already mentioned in previous two blog posts, I was able to visit the UEFA Champions League semi-final BVB against AS Monaco. Furthermore, I have posted the two pre-match warm-up of Dortmund HERE and of Monaco HERE.

Nevertheless, I was able to take some footage from the goalkeepers warm-up as well. If interested, please check out the video below.

Chapter 9 of the European club footballing landscape was about squad cost and wages

Generally, wages absorbed 63% of the club’s revenue in 2015.

As mentioned in previous post about the BVB warm-up HERE, I was also able to tape most of the pre-match warm-up of AS Monaco.

The warm-up can be seen below.

Chapter 8 was about the UEFA clubs and their revenue.

Generally, revenue has grown over the last year with an average of more than 9% per year. The club’s revenue are now six times the level of 1996.

Due to a good friend I was able to visit the UEFA Champions league match of Borussia Dortmund against AS Monaco.

The 6th edition of the annual Al-Kass U17 international tournament was held in Doha in January.

My former colleague Ioannis Grammos was able to visit some games and kind to record some warm-up procedures of PSG and the Aspire Academy.

The fifth chapter of the UEFA Club Footballing Landscape was about (foreign) club ownership.

Forty-four clubs in major European leagues are now under foreign ownership, by owners of 18 different nationalities.

Foreign ownership is still centered in England, where more than half of the clubs in the top two leagues now have foreign owners.

2016 was the most active year for foreign club takeovers, with ten new acquisitions by November, including eight new Chinese owners.

Chapter 4 of the UEFA Club Footballing Landscape was about the supporters.

Over 170 mio people went to European league matches in 2015/2016 with 55 mio in England and Germany alone. Overall there was a significant increase and 14 leagues achieved their best attendance figures in more than 10 years.

The 6th edition of the annual Al-Kass U17 international tournament was held in Doha until today.

My former colleague Ioannis Grammos was able to visit some games and kind to record some warm-up procedures of Eintracht Frankfurt, AS Roma and Kashiwa Reysol.

The second big part of the "The European Club Footballing Landscape", from the 2014/2015 season, was about the players.

The average age of first-team squads (in January 2016) can be seen in the following maps below. It seems that the talent-importing leagues tend to have a higher average first team squad compared to talent exporters (such as Netherlands and the Balkan countries).

The head coach plays a paramount role in every football club. Consequently, UEFA investigated different topics "around" the head coach in its release "The European Club Footballing Landscape".

The manuscript highlighted some data evaluated from the the 2014/2015 season.

First topic was about "Head coach security" and it seems that it remains a problem and it i getting worse in many places. Please have a look at the first European and global maps below.

As previous literature updates, I have performed a PubCrawler search looking for football articles in NCBI Medline (PubMed) and GenBank databases.

Following studies were retrieved for this week:

As previous literature updates, I have performed a PubCrawler search looking for football articles in NCBI Medline (PubMed) and GenBank databases.

Following studies were retrieved for this week:

With the first game of the 2016/2017 UEFA Champions League group stage played I thought its time to shine some light on the possible prize money the clubs (possibly) earn.

As the picture indicates, a possible 62.2 mio Euros are possible with winning all games.

Below is a list of Europe’s football clubs ranked based on their average spectator attendance for the 2015/2016 season.

Interestingly, 9 clubs are from Germany, 4 from England, 3 from Spain, 2 from Netherlands, 1 from France and 1 from Portugal.

A friend of mine was able (or should I say "unfortunately able") to watch the EURO semi-final between host France and Germany.

Below you will find some random (but still entertaining/interesting) facts about the current EURO 2016.

Just in case you have not watched enough football lately I have found some nice YouTube clips that left me with an open mouth (or made me laugh).

This is another post about the upcoming EURO 2016. I thought it would be interesting to see if I can find some "statistics" about the players participating in the tournament.

Whilst on summer break it happened that the French National Football team held a short preparation camp at the "Stubaital" (Austria) for the European Championship 2016 in France. Coincidentally the camp was a 30-minute drive away and I was able to tape a session from outside the training ground (and the fence - obviously I missed to book a ticket beforehand).

With the European Championship around the corner I believe it is worth downloading our "Euro 2016 Game Schedule Pocket Guide".

The Al-Kass tournament was played at Doha last week. Its an international tournament in which U-16 age group teams of several top clubs faced-off in a 10-day competition.

Unfortunately I was not able to attend the games from this year. However, I have not had released the videos from last years tournament. Clicking on the provided links below will give you the warm-up procedures of the selected team.

I was able to attend the Aspetar "Challenges in Football Injuries" that was held at Doha last week.

Below you will find some "take-home/conclusion/key messages" of presentations.

Below is another training session of FC Bayern Munich during its winter training camp 2016 at Doha.

As Bayern Munich hold its winter training camp at Doha earlier this year I was able to compile some footage of the goalkeepers.

The video below shows (mainly) the warm-up as they participated in the team training session after.

Below is another training session of FC Bayern Munich at their winter training camp at Doha 2016.

FC Bayern Munich is holding its winter training camp at Doha.

The following video shows one of the training sessions.

The following video shows some impressions of a PSG training session filmed at Doha this week.

I attended the 8th World Congress on Science and Football 2015 at Copenhagen end of May.

The organizers have taped some sessions and just released the first videos.

In order to watch the individual presentations please click on the links below.

As part of my beautiful Portugal experience I was able to catch some Football as well.

The 3rd FIFA Medical Conference has started this morning and will continue until tomorrow evening.

Zurich was chosen as the host venue and the conference program can be downloaded HERE.

Every year several professional football teams visit Doha to prepare themselves for the second part of their football season.

The following list provides on overview of all sessions that I was able to capture, cut and post on my YouTube channel.

The video below show some footage of the goalkeeper training from Ajax Amsterdam winter training at Doha.

Here is some goalkeeping footage from the FC Schalke 04 training session at Doha 2015.

Ajax played a friendly match against FC Schalke during their winter training camp at Doha.

The footage below shows the pre-match warm-up of Ajax for this game.

FC Schalke held its winter training camp at Doha in January 2015.

I have had already posted some interesting training sessions HERE and HERE and the following video shows another session of Roberto di Matteo.

As part of their winter training camp at Doha, Red Bull Salzburg played a friendly match against local club Al-Sailiya at Aspire Zone.

The video below shows the goalkeeper pre-match warm-up.

I have also posted the goalkeeper warm-ups of Ajax Amsterdam and Schalke 04.

As part of their winter training camp, Schalke 04 played Ajax Amsterdam at Qatar Sports Club in Doha in January 2015.

I have already posted the Ajax Goalkeeping warm-up HERE.

The following video shows the pre-match warm-up of the Schalke 04 goalkeepers.

Here is another training session of FC Bayern Munich.

The footage for this video was taken from their winter training camp at Doha 2015.

As part of the FC Bayern Munich training sessions, I was also able to take some footage from the goalkeeper training.

The following video shows some bits and pieces from the training sessions.

As the last post was the pre-match warm-up of Schalke 04, the video below shows the same content of Red Bull Salzburg.

Schalke 04 played Ajax Amsterdam during their winter training camp at Doha 2015.

The following video shows the pre-match warm-up of the "Koenigsblauen".

Here is another training session of FC Bayern Munich.

The footage for this video was taken from their winter training camp at Doha 2015.

As I have received some interesting comments on the previous "Individual Training Session of Ajax Amsterdam" through social media, I thought the coaches, strength/conditioners and critics might want to see the following video as well.

It shows the identical training session from Schalke 04.

 As Ajax Amsterdam had its winter preparation camp at Doha 2015, I was able to get some footage of individual fitness sessions.

As I have posted several videos of team training sessions of different football teams already, I was also able to get some footage of the teams' goalkeepers.

The video below shows the pre-match warm-up of the Ajax goalkeeper.

FC Bayern Munich had its VW winter training camp in the beginning of January. I was able to get some footage from one of the evening training sessions.

Unfortunately I was not able to get some information about the duration of each part, however, I still hope you will enjoy the video of the training session.

Schalke 04 was holding its winter training camp here at Doha and I was able to get some footage from the morning training session.

Unfortunately I was not able to get some information about the duration of each part, however, I still hope you will enjoy the video.

Ajax Amsterdam is holding its winter training camp here at Doha and I was able to visit a morning training session.

The session was ~ 90 minutes in length and consisted of:

• Unfortunately I have missed the warm-up
• 5 vs 5 + 4 possession game ~15 minutes
• 1 vs 1 ~10 minutes
• 2 vs 2 ~10 minutes
• 3 vs 3 ~10 minutes
• 10 vs 10 ~15 minutes

FC Bayern Munich was holding its winter training camp here at Doha and I was able to get some footage from the morning training session.

Unfortunately I was not able to get some information about the duration of each part, however, I still hope you will enjoy the video.

Schalke 04 is holding its winter training camp here at Doha and I was able to visit a morning training session.

The session was ~ 90 minutes in length and consisted of:

• 15 min warm up
  
• 15 min passing and finishing
  
• 15 min game with 4 goals
• 2 x 15 min 10 vs. 10 with 2 big and 4 small goals
• 15 min game 7 vs 7 incl. goal and end-zone

Ajax Amsterdam is holding its winter training camp here at Doha and I was able to visit a morning training session.

The session was ~ 90 minutes in length and consisted of:

• Warmup ~ 30 minutes
• Passing combination for ~ 15 minutes (3:41 min)
• Game 5 vs 5 plus 4 for ~ 20 minutes (4:08 min)
• Game 5 vs 5 ~ 20 minutes (4:48 min) using one big and two small goals at the same time 6 vs 6 with 2 big goals.

Thanks to a colleague, I was able to put up a new pre-match warm-up video on my youtube channel.

As the title suggests the video shows the Italian Supercup warm-up of Juventus for their match against Napoli at Doha on the 22nd of December 2014.

I hope everyone had a good start into 2015. Before warming up for the new year, I would like to make a quick look back onto 2014 and the five most popular posts.

As many followers enjoy my weekly update on the “latest research in football” my attention was drawn to other kind of research in football.

As it quite funny I thought it is worth sharing it.

Just in case you missed the groin pain conference at Aspetar a couple of weeks ago, HERE you can find all videos/presentations from the conference.

Aspetar is going to hold the 1st World Conference on Groin Pain in Athletes from the 1.-3.11.2014.

As part of the “football” software updates I have given already HERE a couple of month ago, I was lucky to find a very useful, simple, yet practical application lately.

The application is called planet.training and is an online database which can be used to create, categorize and store exercises/training sessions.

• Is there an effect of shoe traction and surface compliance on performance?

• Is there a difference in cutting maneuvers when wearing different studded shoes?

• Can/should female wear men soccer shoes?

This week is utilized by many countries to play international friendly matches.

New Zealand will play Uzbekistan on 9.9. at 2 am (NZ time) and is preparation itself for the match in Doha.

The afternoon session of the second day of the DFB International Coaching Conference 2014 was about the goalkeepers and their performances at the 2014 WC.

The second day started with “The physical preparation on game-day” and was presented by the fitness coach of the U21 team of the DFB.

Depending on the time of the match, a training was scheduled in the morning of the same day of the match.

Possible content was:

On my annual leave I was able to attend the international coaching conference of the German Football Association at Mannheim from the 28.-30.7.2014.

About 1200 participants from 30 nations attended the conference.

The focus of the first day was mainly on the 2014 FIFA World Cup.

Another interesting statistics from the CIES Football observatory.

The statistics takes into account the number of World Cup participants trained per nation, per club as well the number of leagues matches played by footballers per team up to the age of 23.

In order to be recognized as a club, their players needed to be at least 3 years at the club between the age of 15 and 21.

There were already many penalties during the ongoing 2014 FIFA World Cup at Brazil.

With the second round/knock-out stage around the corner, it seems possible that following matches will come to a conclusion with a penalty shoot-out.

As a consequence I have taken some time to scoop through the scientific literature about penalty taking in football. The first paragraph shows some information for the penalty taker, while the second parts deals with important considerations for the goalkeeper.

Considering that a penalty shot only needs about 0.2 to 0.6 seconds (4) for the 11 meters from the spot to the goal, the goalkeeper has very limited chance to react and jump to save the shoot, not even considering the reaction time.

As a result the goalkeeper need to start diving prior to the shot (however, needs to wait as long as possible) to not show the penalty taker the dive direction.

So what can the goalkeeper and the penalty taker do increase the chance of success?

The Football observatory is a research group within the International Centre for Sports Studies (CIES), a private foundation affiliated to the University of Neuchâtel, in Switzerland.

Every year they analyse clubs and players in the big-5 leagues from a demographic, economic and pitch performance perspective.

This is a special post with regards to the FIFA World Cup 2014 as its different environmental conditions at each stadium (temperature and humidity) were fairly often debated in the press already.

Generally, Brazil’s average daily temperature during this time of the year is warmer than many other countries. Research from international matches in Qatar under hot environment significant favored the Qatari team showing the influence/advantage of heat accustomized teams (1 - see references below).

In sport science terms, getting accustomized to a hot (and/or humid) environment is called heat acclimation, which was a topic of interest for many years for exercise physiologists, especially for sporting events such as Tour de France or for military purposes.

Due to the positive feedback the "Pocket Game Schedule" has earned from the UEFA European Championship 2012. I have also made one for the World Cup 2014 in Brazil.

The schedule can be downloaded with the US Eastern Time (EST), Central European Time (CET) and Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST).

Before the UEFA Champions League Quarterfinal against Manchester United tonight, I would like to post two more training sessions from Pep Guardiola and his Bayern. The footage was taken at their VW Winter training camp in Doha 2014.

As both teams spent their winter training camps here in Doha, I have compiled some set-pieces, crossing and finishing drills of both teams.

If you are interested in resistance training and you want to know how training for hypertrophy works......

The published study is from UEFA including the best European Clubs (such as Bayern, PSG, Barca, Real, Benfica, FC Porto, Ajax, AC Milan, Juventus, and Inter Milan and more).

Some small/important results from the study are:

Another video from the FC Bayern Munich VW-training camp in Doha 2014.

Coming from injuries, Schweinsteiger and Robben participated in individual training sessions for some/most of the time during the winter training camp.

The video shows parts of their training routines.

Day 5 of the VW Winter Camp of FC Bayern Munich consisted of another fitness session in the morning.

Again, different elements of the game were combined inclulding passing, sprints and finishing.

With Real Madrid showing a true Champions League class last night, I had NO look at some game stats/performance indicator or any other time motion analysis, neither do I want to try explain why they just punished Schalke.

I just feel that this is a good opportunity to post the Real Madrid warm-up against Paris St. Germain that I have received from Joao Marques earlier in the year here in Doha.

I have already posted several videos from FC Bayern Munich and its training camp here in Doha 2014.

While the previous videos inherited a more physical focus, the following videos, which were made in the evening sessions were more focused on tactics.

Having the UEFA Champions league best of 16 around the corner, I would like to post some more or less random thoughts, however still crucial for coaches, sport scientists and/or S&C staff.

So how important is the physical component in football – which can also be rephrased into: can physical components be game decisive?
With that question I don’t mean if one single sprint and a finish can decide over winning and losing (and we all know the answer to this question). I meant if aerobic/anaerobic endurance, speed (in general) or strength will win games and/or Championships. This question is a little bit harder to answer in my opinion.

John Kobiela sent me the link to some interesting statistics from the Premier League.

The articles on EPLStatistics discusses attrition (rates of employees leaving an organization) in the Premier League.

As previous literature updates, we have performed a PubCrawler search looking for football articles in NCBI Medline (PubMed) and GenBank databases.

Following studies were retrieved for this week:

Like FC Bayern Munich, Red Bull Salzburg held its training camp in Doha 2014.

Some training sessions can be viewed (HERE, HERE and HERE) and the following video shows bits and pieces from the goalkeeping training.

On Tuesday, the expected entry of the insurer Allianz SE with the German record champions became public.

FC Bayern München had already announced its intention to bring a third major partner on board besides the shareholders Adidas and Audi. 

Allianz secured 8.33 percent of  FC Bayern München AG who puts ~110 million euros on the table.

Part of the deal obviously were the naming rights to the stadium until 2041. 

As a result, the shares of Adidas and Audi will diminish from 9.09 to 8.33%.

FC Bayern Munich held its VW training camp in Doha 2014.

I have already posted some team training videos (HERE, HERE as well, and HERE) and obviously there was also some Goalkeeping action.

The following video shows bits and pieces from the goalkeeping training.

True football fans go to football matches (even without their husbands).

Besides FC Bayern Munich, Paris SG, and Zenit FC, Red Bull Salzburg utilized the Aspire Zone for their preparation for the second half of the season.

The following videos show (in chronological order) the training sessions of the team that I was able to visit.

The following videos are presentations hold by world-leaders in their specific areas at Aspetar last year 2013.

Recently, I have posted a couple of different pre-match warm-ups of different professional football teams such as Bayern Munich, FC Schalke 04 and Zenit FC.

Attending most of the Al-Kass (U16-tournament) tournament which hosts nations from different continents, I have made a compilation of pre-match warm-up from different teams around the world.

Unlike professional teams, the staff of these teams (mostly) inherent the same nationality from which the team actually is. As a result, there could be different approaches in football playing styles and therefore warm-up procedures.

Please click on individual team logo to open the video or visit my youtube channel to see the videos.

This might be a predominantly special topic for US coaches, as I presume (with all respect) that not many (European, Asian etc.) coaches will know Anson Dorrance.

So why is that worth a special "research in football" topic? To quote Wikipedia: "He is currently the head coach of the women's soccer program at the University of North Carolina with one of the most successful coaching records in the history of athletics. His team won 21 of the 31 NCAA Women's Soccer Championships. The Tar Heels' record under Dorrance is 719-39-24 (equals an impressive .935 winning percentage) over 33 seasons as of September 9, 2011. He has led his team to a 101-game unbeaten streak and coached 13 different women to a total of 20 National Player of the Year awards. The NCAA has recognized Dorrance as the Women's Soccer Coach of the Year seven times (1982, 1986, 1997, 2000, 2001, 2003 and 2006) and as the Men's Soccer Coach of the Year in 1987. On March 10, 2008 Dorrance was elected to the National Soccer Hall of Fame.

Zenit FC prepare themselves for 2014. Interestingly, their first match will be against Borussia Dortmund on 25/2/2014 in the round of 16 in the UEFA Champions League.

The video below shows a match warm-up against Al-Jaish here in Doha.

As previous literature updates, we have performed a PubCrawler search looking for football articles in NCBI Medline (PubMed) and GenBank databases.

Following studies were retrieved for this week:

Below you will some information about the medical clinic of FC Bayern Munich.

The following video shows the pre-match warm-up of FC Schalke 04 at Gharrafa stadium against the Al-Gharrafa Football club.

The video below shows the morning team training session of day 4 of FC Bayern Munich at the training camp in Doha 2014.

The video shows the pre-match warm-up of FC Bayern Munich at Al-Sadd against FC Merrikh (Sudanese Champion).

FC Schalke 04 is also holding its winter training at Aspire Zone in Doha/Qatar at the moment.

The following videos show

1. a tactical training session (despite missing the beginning of the warm-up).
2. a crossing and finishing game
3. a passing drill