How to prepare your analysis?
Introduction
Without a clear aim of the analysis, it becomes unclear what we’re going to analyze. Therefore this lacks focus and the quality and end result of the analysis will not be good enough. Here’s why clarifying the aim is crucial.
In this blog post, we will focus on the importance of clarifying the aim of the analysis, exploring various examples of who can be analyzed, and understanding who, why and what to analyze specific specifically. This will help you set clear objectives and will give a better end result.
Clarifying the Aim of the Analysis
Before diving into video analysis, it is crucial to define the specific aim or objective you want to achieve through the analysis. Some common objectives may include:
a) Individual Player Analysis: Analyzing the performance of specific players to identify strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement. This can help coaches tailor training sessions and tactics to enhance individual player development.
b) Team Performance Analysis: Assessing the overall team performance to identify patterns, formations, and strategies that work effectively or need improvement. This analysis can aid in refining team tactics, identifying positional play, and improving coordination.
c) Team constellation Analysis: Analyze a part of a team, for example the defense, or the right back with the right winger. This will give insights in their collaboration and will strengthen the relation on the pitch.
d) Opponent Analysis: Analyzing upcoming opponents to understand their playing style, strengths, weaknesses, and key players. This information can guide pre-match preparation and help formulate strategies to exploit their vulnerabilities.
e) Scouting new players: Analyzing potential new players for the team. This information can help discovering new talent, which other clubs wouldn’t have found.
After you’ve found out the aim of the analysis, you have to know what you’re going to analyze.
a) When analyzing an individual player, you have to know what game situations you want to analyze of this player and focus on these ones. This can be everything that happens in a game, just to name a few: crossing situations, aerial duels, first touches on the ball, and so on. You can go as specific as you want.
b) When analyzing the own team as a whole it’s important to know which game phases you’re going to analyze, as we know there’s four phases. Attack, defense, transition to offense and transition to defense. Within these four phases you look at how the team is responding and working together.
c) When analyzing a team constellation you also have to pick game situations and how the constellation can work together more effectively together.
d) When analyzing an opponent you have to know which phases you’re analyzing and most importantly make a translation to your own team.
e) If you’re scouting new players, you have to take into account the identity of a club and what would fit the playing style. A player can be very good at his current team, but the playing style might not fit the club you’re scouting for.
In conclusion, clarifying the aim of analysis is crucial for practical insights. Without a clear objective, analysis becomes aimless and lacks application. In video analysis, objectives could be individual player analysis, team performance analysis, team constellation analysis, opponent analysis, and scouting new players. To conduct effective analysis, it is important to determine what aspects to analyze. For individual players, focus on specific game situations like crossing or aerial duels. For teams, analyze game phases such as attack, defense, and transitions. In team constellations, examine how players work together effectively. Analyzing opponents requires understanding their game phases and translating findings to one’s own team. When scouting new players, consider their fit with the club’s playing style. By aligning the analysis with clear objectives and selecting relevant areas to analyze, valuable insights can inform decision-making and improve performance.
