Ever interested to discover how the role of video analysis is evolving in sport, Dartfish interviewed José Ehrbar who, for the past two years, has been the video analyst at the Association Suisse de Football (ASF). Before taking over this important role, he was a U15-U16 coach at the ASF Training Center in Payern for 12 years.
José, please tell us more about your role
Of course I film and tag the national team’s games but also I create content for our video database, including footage of talented players for talent ID and training sessions for our coaching education needs. I create reference video analyses for our elite football coaches who work with young players from U12 to pro. Actually, 60% of the analysis is for players outside of Switzerland so dartfish.tv is proving extremely useful in the coaching and learning process of our elite players. After 2 years, we now have more than 500 reference videos on our dartfish.tv channel. Players and coaches can all access the videos and use them in the Dartfish Express app. I believe that this video database is unique in Europe.
In fact I manage two different dartfish.tv channels for the national coaches, national team coaches and elite football coaches, each with their own identity; ASF Game and Training Philosophy and ASF Partnership (elite football clubs). Dartfish.tv lets me manage members with different access rights to our channels. Depending on what they need to see and what we want them to see we give them access to any or all of the following collections:
- Coaching education and certification
- Goalie coaching education and training
- Talent identification
- Collections for national teams U15 to U21
- Reference videos
- ASF game philosophy
This depth of analysis is, in part, thanks to the versatile Dartfish toolset we use; Dartfish TeamPro, Dartfish Express and Dartfish Note but this also means that another important part of my job is to support our 13 football elite partners with their Dartfish work.
How did the process of video integration materialize within your different activities?
We started the reflection in 2012. ASF believed that it was very important to introduce video for the following reasons:
- The current generation is a video generation. They use videos on a daily basis.
- We wanted to analyze videos, not just statistics.
- Video is an excellent way to educate both players and coaches.
- Video enables anyone to observe his/her performance to assess strengths, weaknesses, and to track progress.
- Video must be included in the career planning of any player (i.e. medical files).
- Video allows the use of reference clips to achieve perfection and track progress.
What have been the key areas of success over these two years?
Well, our football has been certainly been progressing with the help of video. It now helps us to communicate the ASF game philosophy and our reference content supports coaches with great methodologies. We have individualized videos for our young talent and we have developed the global use of Dartfish within our partnership with the clubs, allowing us to enhance the information exchanged information between our partner coaches and ASF.
What have been key challenges and how have you overcome them?
Anyone who works with video will tell you that the first challenge is to convince our partners of the usefulness of video in general. Our solution was to equip them with the complete toolset: camera, PC, Dartfish software, access to dartfish.tv. Next, we identified the right person at each club, gave them a clear job description and supported them with a certification and training program. We know that their can be a fear of technology and specialized, on-going training is the only way to overcome that.
How did you come to select Dartfish for your solution?
We needed a global solution provider that could answer all our different needs around use of video. It is a 360 degree approach vs working with non-integrated solutions. Dartfish was the evident choice, thanks to their technology – TeamPro software, apps: Express and Note, and of course dartfish.tv with its unique online toolset. Dartfish training and support were also key in our selection.
Where are you today?
The project is evolving and doing very well. I do have to set priorities, because right now, I am the only one in charge of our program. We have met the objectives that we set in 2012 but this is an ever evolving project and new objectives develop on a continuous basis. As we aim for excellence, we regularly adapt our course.
What are next steps?
- Training for special team coaches (goalies, offense, defense)
- Selecting a part-time video coordinator for each partner
- Filming potential talent more often
- Introducing video as core development/training
- Linking videos with statistical analyses
What advice would you give clubs or federations for integration of video?
- Select the right profile (part or full time) with coaching experience
- Plan the right objectives for your video needs
- Train the right people to be in charge of filming, tagging and publishing
- Perform technical and tactical analyses.
- Focus on the essentials and keep it simple
- Create and develop an online video database on dartfish.tv
