by Carl Carpenter

Carl Carpenter is a Performance Analyst for the University of Virginia men’s soccer team. Carl has graciously agreed to share what an actual day in the life of a soccer Performance Analyst is like.

6:30 AM

During the fall season, my day starts pretty early. Training sessions are in the mornings to allow our players to schedule classes for the afternoon and not be pressed for time. I’m very much a morning person, however, so this isn’t much of an issue for me. I live within a five-minute walk of the training grounds so after getting dressed I head off to meet with the other members of staff prior to our session beginning.

7:00 AM

The coaching staff and I meet in our staff locker room before practice to go back over the plan that we made the previous afternoon. During this time, I’ll put up video clips from yesterday’s session or match, depending on the day, and review them with the coaches. Our weeks always have a theme, for example, offensive organization (us with the ball) or defensive organization (us without the ball). The specifics of each session are varied as well, and focus on all thirds of the pitch. We film every session at UVA, and having this huge database of film gives us a huge advantage over those who don’t. After looking at the film and refreshing what we want to highlight in that day’s session, we relax until we meet with the players in the locker room.

8:00 AM

We try to have video sessions with the players every day that we can. The college season is short and busy, so any tool we can use to get a bit of extra player development is important. The day before a match, we have a scouting report (prepared by myself) which highlights the opponent’s key players, team shape, overall strengths/weaknesses, set pieces, etc. When preparing these reports, I will use both a data-based approach as well as the conventional video scouting means (i.e. watching their previous games). InStat is our primary data provider, and while they do give us data packets to utilize, I prefer to look at the raw numbers myself and use what I think is useful for the given opponent. For example: if we are playing a team which I’ve seen will likely sit in a deeper block, I take a look at their underlying numbers (through the use of many well-known metrics and other more obscure ones) and see where we can gain an advantage. Combined with video, this gives a very well-rounded view of the opposition.

8:30 AM

Our training sessions normally last about an hour and a half, (warm-up and cool-down time included). My role during these sessions is to live-code them through Sportscode. At our training pitch and at our stadium we are lucky enough to have remote cameras installed through a company called Spiideo. In this camera feed, which gives me a “tactical feed” of games/practices, there are auto-follow features that track the position of the ball at all times and eliminate the need for me to film and code at the same time. At our training pitch, I connect my computer to the Spiideo feed through an SDI cable and feed it into Sportscode. Each and every repetition of a particular drill is cut out and assigned a “+” or “-“grade depending on the outcome – success in these drills is determined by the end goal of the session, or if there were positive moments from the team/player within them.