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""I think everybody begins to understand that the football game at the highest level is no longer based on athletic potential and ability but that the brain ability and potential has got an enormous influence. Faster moving and decision making can only be achieved through brain anticipation processes.""

"The club also use bespoke statistics to provide their coach with a more objective view of matches. After some persuasion the sports director, Claus Steinlein - a former professional footballer - lets me see the sort of text message their analytics experts send to the coaches at half-time and full-time. Amid the acronyms, two stats stand out: each team's chances and half-chances, and the expected score based on the quality of those chances. The thinking is simple: football is a low-scoring game and so missed chances, luck, or bad refereeing decisions mean a stronger team win less often than in many sports, so such data should give coaches a more accurate assessment of how the scoreline reflects the match. Analytical models are also central in Midtjylland's search for new players. As Steinlein explains, the club could use the database to find any two-footed left-back in the world of a certain standard, aged 22-26, who has not been injured for the previous 18 months - while the recent addition of player-tracking data gives them a further advantage. "Before we had one scout - and he spent half his time coaching," explains Steinlein. "Now we have a team in London crunching the numbers and suggesting suitable targets. We have gone from using our heart to using our brain.""

"Batista paraissait lent sur le terrain, mais dans la tête, il était plus rapide que tous les autres. À la place de se forcer dans la salle de musculation pour transformer son jeu, il avait accepté sa lenteur pour l'utiliser dans le sens du collectif, et développé un meilleur sens du jeu. Cambiasso, c'était pareil. Redondo, idem. Le point commun de tous ces joueurs formés à Argentinos Juniors, c'est leur capacité à penser le jeu, à savoir ce qu'ils font, à comprendre les mécanismes du collectif. Ils n'ont pas une simple position, ils ont un rôle qu'ils épousent. C'est ça, avoir de la personnalité sur le terrain : prendre le recul nécessaire pour comprendre le jeu et ta place au sein du jeu."

""Every team that was dominating in the league or in Europe had a core of home players. If you are talking about Manchester United, they were always a big club, but suddenly there was the Neville brothers, [Paul] Scholes, [Nicky] Butt, [Keith] Gillespie, [David] Beckham, [Ryan] Giggs. That is the core ... the same with Barcelona, Milan. They add to the core but, without that... for me, the likes of Manchester City or Paris Saint-Germain, they are not like those teams. They can do one season where they are doing well, then they are down, then they are up. It is the best when you have both."

"Rugby and soccer are very similar in that you always want to move the ball into space and Bayern Munich and his previous team Barcelona played the most fantastic passing game you have ever seen. The principles are exactly the same."

""Universality is a concept where players interchange between positions, where they are not fixed to any role and instead simply rotate with each other in games," he explains.  "It is along the same thinking as total football, the only difference, and perhaps the key aspect for the future game, is that the team is made up of universal players, all with the skills and attributes required to play in any position.""

"Below are several videos of Jose Mournho working with a group of young footballers. He plays particular attention to the tactical, technical, psychological and physical approach to the players. This as well as how he delivers the information to the players. the full series can be found on youtube."

"Players say that aside from footwork, soccer helped their ability to understand movement on the field. In soccer, they had to continuously work in concert with teammates over a large space-as opposed to the brief bursts of action in football-and they developed an intuition about where teammates would go. This can come in handy both on offense and defense."

"Sa méthode s'appelle 5×5 et elle contient une analyse complète du jeu d'une équipe, visualisée 25 fois d'affilée et analysée à travers une grille reprenant les 5 principes du football (attaque et défense placées, transitions offensives et défensives et coups de pieds arrêtés). Cela lui permet de réaliser une analyse complète des mécanismes et automatismes créés par le collectif et les individualités. Pour lui la philosophie du système de l'OM est tout d'abord basée sur 4 grands principes : dominer défensivement posséder la balle, l'espace et le temps pratiquer un football offensif faire un pressing haut et intense"

"‏Au football, vous avez une formation de départ que vous avez choisie. Mais une fois que le ballon est en mouvement, tout est perdu. Au rugby, nous avons toujours la même organisation au départ, mais c'est la même chose. C'est en cela que le football peut nous apporter. On peut organiser deux, trois temps de jeu, mais après c'est les joueurs qui doivent décider. C'est là que la vision qu'on leur a inculquée entre en jeu. La notion de soutien au porteur de balle est notamment très importante, au football comme au rugby. Il doit toujours y avoir une solution pour le porteur. Il est aussi important d'avoir un relais. Guardiola a son milieu, nous nous avons notre demi d'ouverture."

"In diesem Artikel besprechen wir einen oft vernachlässigten Raum in der Taktiktheorie: Die Halbräume. In unseren Analysen haben wir diese allerdings schon öfters diskutiert und erwähnt. Vielfach wurde dabei gefragt, was genau die Halbräume denn sein sollen; der Antwort darauf möchte ich mich hier widmen. Dabei wollen wir zuerst die Halbräume kategorisieren und danach die Eigenheiten dieser Räume kurz diskutieren."

"How to Play an Attacking Game Johan CRUYFF - Fútbol: Mi filosofia. Cruyff Library, 2012"

"Je dois avouer humblement que je ne suis pas de la génération informatique et statistique. Je ne suis pas non plus de la génération Gutenberg, mais je trouve qu'il y en a un peu ras-le-pompon. D'une manière générale les entraineurs, leurs adjoints mais aussi parfois les spécialistes veulent tout expliquer au travers de la vidéo, y compris l'inexplicable. Et l'affectif, l'humain, l'inspiration, la qualité technique et le talent, on s'en fout complètement ! On explique aux joueurs : "Voilà messieurs, vous comprenez, là vous avez manqué un contrôle, vous avez manqué une frappe, vous avez manqué un appel de balle… On arrête et on va vous montrer comment on fait." Et ça me gonfle. Honnêtement, ce n'est pas possible."

"There are several prerequisites for successful counterpressing. The decisive factor is the overall positioning of the team and their playing style right before attempting to counterpress. The players must play as close to one another as possible so that they can press together as a unit right after the ball is lost - which is a given in short passing football. At the same time, they should not stick so close to one another that they neglect to cover enough space. Usually, a good layout in possession and a good shape behind the lost ball go hand in hand."

"In theory at least, no defensive tactic can reach optimal efficiency. If a team chooses to defend via a high pressing tactic, space will be left behind their block. Alternatively, a tactic of defending in a low and compact block will allow space in front of the block and gift the opposition possession. Logically then, the best method of defending would be a hybrid between the two systems. That's where Total Defending comes in.   Total defending is a hybrid between zonal and man marking used in a clever way. It involves two phases of play: high pressing and low block defending. Bayern have mastered the art of structurally changing the way they defend mid-game. In other words, they interchange between man marking and zonal as each scenario dictates."

"Manchester United manager Louis van Gaal defends accusations that his team played a long-ball style against West Ham by producing a dossier of statistics in a news conference. Speaking ahead of United's match against Burnley at Old Trafford on Wednesday, Van Gaal explained the reasons for his tactics at Upton Park by referring to a printed handout featuring diagrams and data, which was then distributed to the assembled journalists."

"Joao Sacramento a rejoint l'AS Monaco durant l'été 2014 en compagnie de Leonardo Jardim. Assistant de Miguel Moita, responsable de la vidéo, il est le scout en charge de l'analyse des adversaires de l'ASM. Le Portugais a précédemment travaillé pour l'équipe nationale du Pays de Galles et a tenu un rôle de consultant pour la sélection argentine au cours de la Coupe du Monde 2014. Joao a étudié les fondements du football et l'analyse de la performance au sein de l'University of South Wales et est actuellement en cours de validation d'un Master en sciences de la performance et du coaching, reconnu par la Licence A UEFA. Interrogé par le site socceranywhere, le Lusitanien (à droite sur la photo, avec Moita) nous dévoile les secrets du processus de scouting qu'il développe à l'AS Monaco, et sa vision de la "philosophie de jeu" qu'une équipe doit construire. "

"In terms of analyzing soccer matches, two of the most important factors to consider are: 1) the formation the team played (e.g., 4-4-2, 4-2-3-1), and 2) the manner in which they executed it (e.g., conservative - sitting deep, or aggressive - pressing high). Despite the existence of ball and player tracking data, no current methods exist which can automatically detect and visualize formations. Using an entire season of Prozone data which consists of ball and player tracking information from a recent top-tier professional league, we showcase an automatic formation detection method by investigating the "home advantage". In a paper we published recently, using an entire season of ball tracking data we showed that home teams had significantly more possession in the forward third which correlated with more shots and goals while the shooting and passing proficiencies were the same. Using our automatic formation analysis, we extend this analysis, and show that teams tend to play the same formation at home as they do away, but the manner in which they execute it is significantly different. Specifically, we show that the formation of teams at home is significantly higher up the field compared to when they play away. This conservative approach at away games suggests that coaches aim to win their home games and draw their away games. Additionally, we also show that our method can visually summarize a game which gives an indication of dominance and tactics. While enabling new discoveries of team behavior which can enhance analysis, it is also worth mentioning that our automatic formation detection method is the first to be developed."