Fifa and Barcelona aim to standardise data amongst football clubs

Fifa has partnered with Barcelona to unify and facilitate the comparisons of data among football clubs.

As of yet, it’s incredibly difficult for football teams to compare data, because they use both in-house and external data collectors to store data from matches and training sessions. So, when footballers play for different teams, the collected data is in different formats.

To fix this problem, Barcelona and Fifa are launching the Electronic Performance and Tracking Systems (EPTS). The EPTS will standardise the format that data is stored in and allow football clubs to exchange and compare their data.

With more effective ways of looking at data, Fifa and Barcelona hope that performance will improve among all football clubs.

Johannes Holzmüller, Fifa’s Head of Football Technology Innovation, said: “Clubs have a lot of data that comes from different suppliers and sources. And it is very important to compare this data. That is why we have developed a standard format with the Barça Innovation Hub that makes it possible to control, interpret and compare this data in a more simple way.”

“We [Barcelona and Fifa] have been working together since the creation of the Barça Innovation Hub, especially in the last two years,” he continued. “It is a starting point. We still have to make improvements, but this is the first time that we have had a global data structure accessible to everyone to share information. It is a totally pioneering initiative.”

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Parker Sikes
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