IN HIS early days at Middlesbrough, one of Steve McClaren’s players likened working under him to “being in the bloody Big Brother house”, a reference to the plethora of cameras that he had installed to track their every move, ensuring that there was no hiding place on the pitch.
In the age of computerised analysis, with just about every Barclays Premiership club using such a system to monitor performance, the cameras might not unnerve footballers as they once did but, perhaps more than ever, England’s players will have the feeling of being watched this evening as their new head coach prepares to heighten the FA’s use of the ProZone system that he helped to pioneer during his time as assistant manager of Derby County.
During Sven-Göran Eriksson’s reign, the FA had a loose arrangement with ProZone, which, largely on McClaren’s advice, provided post-match technical analysis based on the data recorded by eight to twelve cameras installed at roof level inside stadiums.
Now, McClaren plans to strengthen ties with the Leeds-based company, which has been asked to monitor the first three home games of the new regime, the friendly against Greece tonight and the European Championship qualifying matches against Andorra on September 2 and Macedonia on October 7.
The FA is in negotiations to extend the vague agreement into something permanent, with McClaren eager to have ProZone equipment installed at the new Wembley Stadium at a projected cost of up to £40,000. Farther down the line, there is the possibility that he could employ an analyst to digest the company’s findings.
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If Eriksson regarded it as an occasional reference tool, McClaren plans to make ProZone a central part of his regime, just as Sir Clive Woodward made it an integral part of England’s preparations for the triumphant rugby union World Cup campaign in 2003.
Yesterday, ProZone officials declined to comment on their prospects of a increased involvement with the McClaren regime. “This is something we do not want to discuss at this moment,” one official at the company said. “We have done work with England in the past and naturally we would hope to have a greater involvement with them under Steve McClaren, but there is no contract in place.”
ProZone, though, makes no secret of McClaren’s devotion to its product, which he introduced to English football while working under Jim Smith at Derby and which he describes on its website as “the most comprehensive coaching tool available today”.
Twelve of the 20 Premiership clubs, including Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United, have paid a reported £200,000 fee to use the company’s services over the coming campaign. Despite a growing number of competitors on the market, Blake Wooster, ProZone’s business development manager, says that its ability to “recreate the game in a 2D format, covering every player and every blade of grass”, is unrivalled.
ProZone calculated last season that, on average, Wayne Rooney covers 11.82 kilometres a match, of which 4km is at walking pace, 4.8km jogging, 1.5km running, 1km light sprinting and 500 metres sprinting. Over 90 minutes, he averaged 105 touches. That is merely the tip of the iceberg in terms of the data, but it is as much as ProZone, eager to respect confidentiality agreements, divulges.
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Perhaps the most quoted ProZone statistic is that David Beckham covered no fewer than 16.1km in the famous World Cup qualifying match against Greece at Old Trafford in 2001. Friendly or not, with Big Brother watching and McClaren preparing to scrutinise the findings in his Soho Square office, there might be a few contenders to run that figure close tonight.
WHAT IS PROZONE?
A computerised performance-analysis tool, Prozone works through 12 special cameras or sensors that are installed in the stadium to trace every movement by a player during a match. The data is processed by performance analysts and sports scientists at ProZone’s offices in Leeds, offering a statistical insight into a player’s technical and physical performance and a team’s tactical efforts. The encoded animation, which is sent to the club in question, is accurate to within one tenth of a second and is usually displayed in a two-dimensional format.