A child crying in the restaurant? Have a long flight ahead of you? Would you like to read your own newspaper on vacation? The tablet has been offering a customized solution for years.
They are behind in football. Watch an Eredivisie match and you’ll likely see a tripod with a tablet on it in front of the sofa and a serious looking coach behind it.
But what exactly are they doing there?
“Here is our chief again! Did you forget your stick?”
football humor. Assistant coach Nourdin Boukhari still gets a lot of comments from behind his tablet on the bench at Sparta.
The former Moroccan and Ajax attacker firmly believes in the use of his digital assistant. It has seen it used by top European clubs in the Champions League and is now using it in the Premier League.
Check what you’re training
It takes live images from different camera positions during the game. If something catches his eye, he can remember that moment and let it go.
“As coaches, we want to see what we’re training for in a match,” says Boukhari, Maurice Steijn’s assistant at the mighty Sparta.
“Imagine: we can’t get past the opponent’s pressure, then I can try to show with examples how it works. I’ll show this to Maurice. A football discussion gets better with pictures.”
He is holding a German tablet at the RKC.
Sander Duitsland, assistant coach at RKC, is the man with the tablet on the couch. He also takes pictures of the match.
During the match, German works with a video analyst and a goalkeeping coach sitting high in the stands.
“We are checking to see if our tactical game plan is correct and whether the players are doing their job. And sometimes you see something that you can use later in the game,” says German.
“We played a game on the 5-3-2 system recently, but we noticed that we often lack a midfielder compared to strong opponents.”
“We saw it with the naked eye. Then we looked at the images on the iPad to find the solution. Then we remodeled it, started playing with four midfielders and it got better.”
In consultation with German, the video analyst puts the pieces together and then puts them in the correct folder so the technicians can show the footage to the players at halftime.
failed variable
English: “For example, in the middle of a game, we made some set balls to show where the field is. Then we applied it in the second half.”
“One of us went to the edge of the sixteen-metre field at the corner kick. The opponent left some space. Then he took the ball, took it and shot it.”
“That way we get a corner kick. And while it could stand there freely, it was completely open. But the shooter had something else in mind. Looks like he forgot the photos at halftime.”
Except for this example, all football coaches believe in the use of images. According to 42-year-old Boukhari, it also suits the current generation of football players.
“I think the latest smartphones have four cameras. This generation does everything with pictures. And it should be remarkable, it should be fast.”
It used to be different
A big difference for his time as a player. “When I started professionally, you had a notebook with some sayings. And the coach stood in front of a board to say something about the opponent. That was it.”
“Today, all training and matches are filmed and you can send individual photos to players. I guess these guys don’t care if you give them a notebook now. They grew up with pictures and are already using cell phones,” says Boukhari.
The 39-year-old German, once a professional football player like Boukhari, agrees.
“When I was an actor, you had a lot of information, but now this information is supported by pictures. And pictures don’t lie. So your story about an actor will be better.”
Will he come as a robot?
Two assistant coaches predict that the use of visuals in football will continue to increase. “But I think it’s okay for now,” German sighs. “Soon I will have so much information on my tablet that I will no longer watch the match.”
“Sometimes we talk about laptop trainers. We have to make sure they don’t turn into robots,” Boukhari concludes with a smile.
Source: NOS
I’m George Gonzalez, a professional journalist and author at The Nation View. With more than 5 years of experience in the field, I specialize in covering sports news for various print media outlets. My passion for writing has enabled me to craft stories that capture the attention of readers all over the world.
