Eagle-eyed fans might have noticed eight newly installed video cameras hanging above the BMO Field press box at Toronto FC's game against the Colorado Rapids last Saturday. These specialized cameras provided a better look at the match not for the TV viewers at home, but rather for the TFC coaching staff.
Saturday's game marked TFC's first use of software designed by ProZone, a Leeds, England-based sports analysis company. Through those eight cameras, virtually every piece of information available about a soccer game is collected, analyzed and made available for a club to learn from.
Toronto head coach John Carver showed off his club's newest toy during a demonstration session in the Reds locker room on Thursday. Carver showed a multitude of different statistics collected by ProZone from the Rapids match -- not just standard numbers like corners taken and shots on goal, but also a player's passing tendencies, recovery time, positioning trends, what he did when he had possession of the ball, and more.
"It's like Big Brother," Carver joked. "You can't hide."
After the cameras recorded Saturday's match, a DVD was sent to ProZone's central office in England. The full compilation of stats was back in Toronto by last Monday, giving the Reds almost a full week to examine and learn from the information before their next game, this Saturday against Kansas City. Likewise, a DVD of an opponent's last match could be sent, analyzed and returned to Toronto in order to be closely watched before the next game.
Carver said the depth of detail provided by the technology allows him and the rest of the Reds coaching staff to examine several different causes of a problem on the field, and also several possible solutions.
"If we're not scoring goals, I've got to ask myself why," Carver said. "Is it we're not getting the ball into the final third quick enough? Is it because when we get into the final third, the delivery of the crosses is not good enough? Are we not getting enough crosses in the box? So I can use that for my preparation for the following week for training."
One of Carver's favorite features is an animated version of the game can be re-created so he can examine what all of his players are doing at all times. If he was watching a standard game DVD made up of footage from a TV broadcast, Carver explained, he would be mostly limited to watching just the action around the ball.
"What I now know, once the ball has gone over there, I now know where my back four is in relation to where the ball is," Carver said. "That's what excites me about this product. You can't do that anywhere else unless you have a separate camera on the back four."
For a conditioning-conscious team like the Reds, perhaps the most important aspect of ProZone is its fitness measurements. Statistics like distance covered (literally, how many meters a player travels during the course of a game), a player's average speed and how it increases or decreases as the match goes on, and the quality of these runs gives the coaching staff an idea of how hard a player is working.
"On the fitness side of it, it tells you the high intensity runs, everytime you had a sprint, jog, every time you walked, tells you everything you do," Carver said.
For example, Toronto's team leader in distance covered during the Colorado game was midfielder Kevin Harmse, with 11,400 meters -- or just short of eight miles. Harmse is one of several TFC players who is already impressed with the ProZone tools after just a few days of use.
"It is good ... to see, to have everything broken down like that, it's excellent. It helps tremendously," Harmse said. "We haven't had a chance to really sit down and take it out, but just from the gist of what we had ... it's incredible how much feedback it gives you, and the technology is amazing. Once we really sit down and get into it every game, I'm sure we'll learn a lot from it."
The statistical evidence also makes it harder for an underachieving player to escape his coach's wrath, said Carver.
"If you've got a player who's saying, 'I worked hard today, Coach,' I'll say, 'Well hang on a minute, not according to this you didn't," he said. "It's a backup to what your eyes see. Experience tells you things and you can see things, but this is your backup. 'Coach, I kept position every time I got the ball.' 'No you didn't, you kept giving it away.'
"The hard-working players love it, the lazy players hate it," he added with a grin.
Carver first became familiar with ProZone in the late 1990's, while the company was in its early development and while Carver was working on the coaching staff at Newcastle United. He was one of several English coaches who provided feedback to ProZone's creators about what sorts of information would be most helpful for a coach to have in order to best evaluate and monitor a team's performance. This feedback, Carver noted, is ongoing -- he mentioned that he had recently made a suggestion that was going to be incorporated into the next ProZone statistical package.
ProZone's services have become widely used by several clubs in the Premiership, as well as the U.S. Soccer Federation. Toronto FC are the first MLS club to use ProZone's analysis, but Carver predicts that the technology will soon be used throughout the league.
At the end of the day, however, Carver knows that ProZone won't score any goals or make any tackles. The benefit of the technology will only come if it is properly utilized to best benefit the flesh-and-blood players on the pitch.
"For every player, we can give them a document about everything they do in a game, from a physical point of view, a tactical point of view, a technical point of view," Carver said. "We have to make sure we don't scare the players with it and not take too much out of it.
"The one thing you have to be careful of is you don't get too involved with too many stats. That's down to the coaching staff ... we decided what we need to take out of it to use its value. The more the staff gets used to it, the more we'll get out of it."
Mark Polishuk is a contributor to MLSnet.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Soccer or its clubs.
