Pairing Video With Stopper Data

Integrating video feedback into a high-performance training environment helps both players and coaches improve. A 2010 study found that athletes supported with video feedback reported less anxiety and perceived their coaches far more positively than those who didn’t – meaning that video feedback not only helps improve technique, it also helps increase confidence and mental strength. It’s literally a game changer in terms of high-performance player development.

Over the last year, we’ve been working on a couple of innovative ways to incorporate video into our Stopper Pro beta. First, we’ve been using the timecodes generated by tracking games with Stopper to auto-generate short 30 second video clips from the game footage. This has the potential to save coaches who use video feedback a lot of time – instead of scrubbing through a full game, they can review just the relevant sections of game footage. Even better, that footage uses the Stopper metadata to neatly organize each clip by type of goalkeeper action. It’s a great way to contextualize Stopper player data and also makes a great library for viewing, say, a season’s worth of 1v1 saves.

Secondly, we want to use video to make data collection easier in the first place. The beta version of our software identifies when the ball is in the defensive third, meaning that instead of collecting Stopper data live during a game (a challenge if you’re coaching multiple players) coaches can review the game footage and then simply jump to the parts of the game where the goalkeeper is likely to be part of the play. Over time we hope to introduce machine learning to the algorithm, meaning that not only will it identify when the ball is in the defensive third, but also when the goalkeeper makes a save or plays the ball. Ultimately, our hope is to bring the technology and data collection that’s available to professional teams within reach of high-performance development leagues in a cost effective, user friendly software package.

Finally, that study on video feedback found it wasn’t just great for players – coaches that used video feedback viewed their own performance more positively than coaches who didn’t. Seems like a win for everyone on the pitch!