The RFEF is an example in this section due to the support that the department has had since the arrival of Luis Rubiales. “The luck of belonging to the RFEF is that Our work is believed and the companies we work with listen to us to develop their products. We get feedback from the big companies related to football analysis. In addition, we share experiences with analysts from other federations and even from other sports”narrates a Pablo Peña who has seen how in the last five years the RFEF has experienced an exponential technological implementation with the installation of automatic cameras in the training fields, programs to work vertically, investment in products that the department required, expansion of staff, resources…
And all this work is going to stay forever. At first, the culture in soccer was that if a member of a coaching staff changed teams, they took the storage media with them and the work done was lost to the federation and coaching staff. However, in the Spanish Federation, “One of the most important things that have been done in recent years is working on a platform in which all the work of any coach and coach -male or female, from the absolute national team or youth team- They are accommodated for the one who comes later. The legacy, to this day, is impressive because we have been working for almost five years without an information leak, everything remains in the cloud. And everyone who comes new has access to it to view all the work”Pena points out.
“It also helps players”
This culture is given great importance in the department because when a new coach comes in, the first thing he does is try to understand the context and ecosystem into which he enters, something that Luis de la Fuente has already done. The analysts are available for whatever you need until the obligations and roles of each one are decided. Thanks to all this philosophy and work, a selector is always going to find himself with the follow-up and work of the previous selector (through videos and specific data of each footballer, at group level…) and “Today it is difficult to find any need for a coach that we cannot provide thanks to the means that the RFEF has provided us with”. And not only the coaching staff benefits from data analysis, “It is a multidisciplinary way of working that also helps players”adds Paul.
“At the Federation level, with the commitment of these last five years, we are at the level of resources and means as one of the most prepared Federations worldwide to face any type of challenge. We aspire to improve and continue investing to continue growing”recognizes Peña, who has experienced first-hand the evolution of coaching processes and how the analyzes to make decisions have gone from subjectivity to objectivity in search of a goal. The goal as the ultimate goal and thousands of data and processes analyzed to reach it by the shortest and most reliable path.