The footballing revolution at Manchester City began around seven years ago now and the backing of Abu Dhabi has transformed a successstarved English outfit into one of the planet’s elite clubs.
Two Premier League titles and both the FA and League Cups provide evidence of the rapid improvement made on the pitch, but that really only tells a fraction of the story.
The vision of City’s ambitious benefactors has already grown far beyond the establishment of a successful football team. The facilities at their Manchester headquarters have been grandiosely augmented with the Etihad Campus now rivalling any professional sporting facility in the world. And while that base in the North West of England remains the operation’s nerve centre, the City Football Group has been launched with clubs in Melbourne, Yokohama and New York acquired to form a burgeoning four-pronged global brand.
The challenges in fostering growth in the nascent stages of this aspiring football empire are numerous, not least in the realm of Information Technology. And while the start of City’s footballing revolution could be pinpointed by the multi-million pound signing of a Sergio Aguero or a Yaya Toure; the advent of the CFG’s digital revolution arrived earlier this month with the clinching of a partnership with German software giants SAP.
From the boardroom activity in Manchester to a fresh intake at the academy in Melbourne, the group is spawning ever-increasing sums of data, so they recognised the need for outside help in understanding their business better and gaining maximum insight from the numbers.
Step forward SAP, who have become the official ‘Cloud Software Provider’ and trusted advisor of the CFG, signing a global, multi-year marketing and technology partnership to help the group in three key areas: business operations, player and team analytics and fan engagement.
“This partnership is as important as it is broad,” said Khaldoon al Mubarak, chairman of City Football Group. “In SAP we have found a technology partner that is committed globally to our businesses and one that shares our constant drive for innovation.
“Our common ambition is to create groundbreaking football specific technology solutions and products and I have every confidence that we will be successful.”
One obvious benefit is that by using the same systems throughout the group, the four clubs of the CFG can come together and feel like a singular global company “speaking the same business language”, according to chief executive Ferran Soriano. And by establishing uniformity throughout the group, the four clubs can share knowledge, marketing strategies and the best commercial practice.
“The CFG is something new, something that has not been done before,” added Soriano. “We are the only football organisation that is truly global and operates all across the world, 365 days a year and 24/7. That’s very easy to say but very hard to manage.
“So we need technology. We need to manage operations in different continents where we share information, things like the marketing side of it. Some other things are more local, like ticketing, so we need to manage both locally and globally, we need to be connected and speak the same language, the same business language.”
However, it is in the area of performance analysis that SAP’s system really shows its full potential. The origins of the software City will use this season can be found in Germany’s World Cup success in Brazil last year.
– Inside Story: MLB still going strong in the USA
– #360debate: Is Benteke Liverpool’s problem solver?
– FIFA: Pressure grows on Blatter to leave early
– GALLERY: Premier League kits for 2015-16
Back in 2013, SAP and the German Football Association (DFB) announced a partnership to improve the business processes of the federation. Yet as the World Cup neared the DFB were eager to gain every advantage they could and asked SAP to help. The result was ‘Match Insights’, a programme the Germans used to great effect in South America.
“SAP’s involvement has transformed the football experience for coaches, players, fans, and the media,” said Oliver Bierhoff, the former Germany striker and current assistant to Joachim Low.
“Imagine this: In just 10 minutes, 10 players with three balls can produce over seven million data points. With SAP, our team can analyse this huge amount of data to customise training and prepare for the next match.”
Match Insights has since evolved into a new programme – ‘Sports One’. The solution consists of components for team management, planning training sessions, player fitness management and performance analysis. There is also detailed tracking of injuries, medication and performance diagnostics for a comprehensive health history of each player.
#RunSimpleTourUK at new home of football Olympic Park. @davidgold showing how SAP help Germany win the World Cup. pic.twitter.com/rDXlMVR2jq
— Sean O’Callaghan (@socallaghanSAP) July 15, 2015
For post-match analysis, the data is supplied by partners Opta and Prozone and, in combination, these insights are expected to help customise training, prevent injury, adapt tactics and develop the entire team. Every member of staff, playing and non-playing, will have a log-in with the data personalised for their role.
Manager Manuel Pellegrini will have access to the data for all his players and so forth, while the physio’s experience will be geared towards the health of the players. Ultimately it perhaps might be most beneficial from a scouting perspective with the software capable of simplifying, sorting and storing exhaustive data on an inordinate number of potential signings. And of course Toure and Aguero can log on straight after a match to view a forensic breakdown of their own performance.
“Technology will allow us to play better football,” added Soriano. “More and more coaches, and particularly our coaches, are listening to the guys who come with the data. We are going to work with SAP to find new ways of understanding the game, reading the game and designing a better game to win.”
The third ambition stated when the two parties launched their partnership this month concerned fan engagement, and most notably the matchday experience.
City believe that by using SAP’s technology a raft of stats and data can be made available to fans in real-time to create a more engaging and immersive interaction with their supporters.
“It is important we are giving the fans more opportunities to enjoy the game,” said Soriano. “More and more we see that fans want to understand it. They ask ‘why is this happening, why are we losing the possession, or why do we miss so many chances?’ The technology is going to help us get fans closer to the game, closer to the action.”
