Zürich calling
12:00am
During June I will be working in Zürich as a Euro2008 volunteer at the Letzigrund Stadium.
My observations can be read at http://zurich.joewesthead.com
May 15, 2008
May 13, 2008
Success in business: the Moneyball approach
11:15am
What happens when you combine all the fashionable thought-provoking books and apply it to business?
The Tipping Point, Freakonomics, Wikinomics and particularly Moneyball were never intended as books on management but that hasn’t stopped many firms developing their own interpretations.
Specialists in all sorts of fields have read Michael Lewis’ “Moneyball” and taken something valuable away from it. Lewis himself suggests that people have interpreted Billy Beane’s methods as the Oakland A’s GM in ways he never intended. Moneyball is fast being forgotten as having anything to do with baseball, but an approach to ‘managing’ any group.
XO Communications, an IT company, have found their own slugging percentage to find out who were the Go To Guys in their companies by asking:
- Who do you go to for advice or information when assessing a difficult problem or discussing ideas?
- Who do you depend on to get your job done?
- Who do you communicate with most frequently? and
- Who is your most valued contact within XO IT Operations?
Like Beane, Steve Randle, Vice President of IT Operations for XO Communications wanted to find an objective way to understand his organization and how to make it more successful. Like many IT executives, Randle used metrics such as uptime, server statistics and project completions to illustrate his team’s achievements. While these metrics paint a useful picture, Randle realized that there was a more fundamental reason his organization was successful—because of employees’ knowledge and relationships—and he wanted to document it.
What else can we find to measure and improve?
April 20, 2008
Moneyball hits the Premier League
11:34pm
“The idea is that we were seeking undervalued assets in an inefficient market,” he said. “What we tried to do was find value in areas where most people weren’t necessarily applying the right values. And we did that cost-effectively.”
“Say you have an approach to signing players and you get it right 30% of the time and then you can discover a different approach that allows you to do the right thing 35% of the time, you have then created a 5% arbitrage. I don’t know if we can do that for soccer but I want to find out.”
This was always a question of when rather than if. The issue that bothered me was how? The end of the article poses a teaser of what we might expect in the future:
1. Number of touches - Reveals player’s fitness level, the number of times he gets into a position to receive the ball and team-mates’ willingness to pass to him
2. Shot creation - Shows the attacking effectiveness of a player, especially attacking midfielders and forwards. Measures ability to balance ball retention with creating scoring chances
3. Ability to retain the ball - Measures contribution of players who are less directly involved in attack
4. Balls won per 90 minutes - Attacking players’ willingness to defend; defenders’ ability to tackle, intercept passes and position themselves well
April 14, 2008
Of Mice and Men
6:41pm
“It is this relationship between the elite and the ordinary which makes for compelling viewing. It isn’t rags-to-riches nor is it necessarily David versus Goliath. It’s daring to achieve.
“I’ve just guest posted over at PitchInvasion.net again, featuring an interview with film-maker Sigvard Wohlwend and his newly-released film “Kicken für die Krone” (English title: The Mouse that Scored)
April 11, 2008
Sounders' voices heard
1:44pm
So it looks like the Seattle Sounders will be the name of the new MLS franchise after all.
According to EUfootball.biz,
“The club conducted a fan ballot for the name, given the options of Seattle FC, Seattle Alliance and Seattle Republic. More than 14,500 voted online, but more than half of the votes were write-in, and the majority of those favoured Sounders…The write-in name received 20 percent more votes than the other choices.”
A victory for the fans of the MLS and no Beckham in sight.
Read more about the dispute here.
April 09, 2008
Wenger's "Natural Potential"
12:00am
Inside Sport showed an interesting interview with Arsene Wenger last week. It highlighted his charisma that is often not seen in the stressful surroundings of the post-match interview.
However, I was interested in his thoughts on money. Wenger is famously prudent in the transfer market compared to his rivals and events such as the Champions League exit this week suggest hubris on his part.
On the show Wenger spoke of relying only on a club’s “natural potential”, and only spending what he thought was dutifully earned by the clubs:
Gate receipts + Sponsorship + TV money = Natural potential
Although he didn’t elaborate, he mentioned both Newcastle and Aston Villa (these could be questioned though in the light of recent takeovers).
For what it’s worth, I think beyond Arsenal it is only Blackburn and Everton who are successfully leveraging their natural potential in the Premier League.
April 02, 2008
Winning matches from the lab
12:00am
BBC’s ‘Pods and Blogs’ program recently covered the Milan Lab, which is working with Microsoft to develop new ways of analysing and increasing footballers’ fitness. Milan’s current squad is full of veteran players who only last season won the Champions League.
Their exit to Arsenal this year suggested a passing of the batton to a much more energetic - though no less scientific - football side.
Today is no surprise to hear of the appliance of science and sports medicine in football training grounds, though The Times’ article about Aston Villa’s new complex at Bodymoor Heath raised an eyebrow:
“The coaching sessions at Villa are always high-intensity and game-orientated, 45 minutes is usually the maximum time that players will spend on the training pitch. On the day before a game it is simply two 10-minute periods between young and old, the competitive element enhanced by a vote among the players to award the yellow jersey to the worst among them. On match day the standard of measurement is more advanced. Villa are one of eight Premier League clients of Amisco, whose analysis software provides computerised reconstruction of games and statistics on distance covered by every player, the average time between activities, the number of passes and the number of passes completed. From next season this data will be available to subscribing clubs while the game is happening.”
March 19, 2008
Setanta's take on lower league football
12:00am
Setanta have spent the season showing as much football as possible from all corners of the globe and even some action from the underworld. The Blue Square Premier (née Conference) hasn’t just been sandwiched in between highlight reels of more important matches. Setanta have realised it is patronising to suggest this is the Premiership - indeed, its USP is probably that it isn’t the Premiership.
As a result, they’ve taken a different production view that should be hailed:
Soon Kidderminster have equalised. Behind the dugouts things are getting rather heated. Peter Taylor, no less, is up on his feet, pursued closely by a man with a camera. The natives aren’t exactly getting restless, more a little weary and long-suffering. Most of them are more concerned with good-naturedly heckling “Box Of Tricks” Cole as he’s commandeered for an in-the-process-of-being-substituted interview. Otherwise it really is very friendly around here, with none of the friction between crowd and players you find in the Premier League. It’s all too close for that. At this level the players seem a bit like someone you might vaguely know, the coolest kid in the biggest class at school.
As I commented on the original article, I think the take-away from this is that Setanta aren’t focusing on the football itself. By interviewing the managers mid-game, watching the team talk, capturing fans, they’re helping to create more of a match day experience on the TV.
Meanwhile, Sky promotes the football and not a lot else. It’s all well and good when the Premier League delivers, but it’s hopeless when they big up “Grand Slam Sunday” and the football is dire.
March 11, 2008
The Wisdom of Crowds
8:26pm
The Internet has been a means for millions to interact with each other without typical societal barriers. Innovation and creativity oozes from individuals who are valued online and have made connections that aren’t easily developed in an offline world. The history of the Internet, much like the history of football, tells the story of the masses joining forces to contribute to an activity of immeasurable importance.
Online collaboration has existed for some years but often it has been sporadic and at times accidental. Certainly in football circles, collaboration is a term that doesn’t often appear yet certainly plays a part. Messageboards, blogs and video sharing sites are all methods of assimilating, synthesising and interpreting information but often there is no explicit goal. Increased Internet capabilities in recent times have given rise to projects with ambitions based around actions.
One need only look at the much publicised example of MyFootballClub.co.uk, which offers members the opportunity to democratise decisions on the running of the football club and matters on the pitch. However, this fails to harness the beauty of online networks and at the very least makes team-specific issues such as leadership and relation management redundant. Online communities, like any organisation, are not fully democratised. Various roles are assumed, such as contributors and leaders, to fully utilise the talents of individuals. The likes of MyFootballClub.co.uk would do well to use the community to discover and exploit the pool of resources available rather than a direct democracy. In football terms, this could have very interesting implications.
Consider a team that didn’t send its scouts anywhere until they were all but certain they wanted to sign the player. Instead, they allow a network of interested fans to contribute to a scouting network. Much like the feedback systems of sites such as eBay, those who recommend players who turn out to be successful become more trusted and take on a role of responsibility within the community.
Or how about a team that instead or poring over hours of video tapes for tactical analysis, instead release the videos online for the community to develop a Wiki on the opposition?
Lower league teams in particular may benefit from better allocation of coaching resources by allowing enthusiasts to make sense of raw statistical data regarding player development and fitness levels. Even where a club views such ideas with caution or suspicion, they may benefit from the diversity of approaches from those without an agenda.
Not surprisingly for anyone who has read Moneyball, baseball is leading the way in sport for online collaboration. The St. Louis Cardinals’ “One for the Birds” scheme could certainly port to football:
“[The contest] is meant to help the team find talent at smaller, non-Division I colleges that don’t get much attention from scouts. Fans file entries by going to the Cardinals’ Web site and filling out a form, including the player’s name, statistics and a summarized recommendation of up to 300 words and other information. When the submissions are in, the team plans to send its own scouts to evaluate a handful of the most interesting prospects and…possibly select one or more of them in baseball’s amateur draft. The winning fan - the one whose entry is judged most compelling, whether a player is drafted or not - gets a trip to St. Louis to see a pair of ball games.”
Such projects might seem far-fetched and there are certainly many issues that extend far beyond what can be covered here. But there would undoubtedly be a thawing in relations between club and consumer, management and fans, and at the very least increased respect for the work done within a club.
Elsewhere on the web one of the best success stories was of Goldcorp Inc, a large gold mining firm. Facing financial meltdown, they took a huge risk in putting their geological data online for people to analyse and predict where deposits might be found. In an industry where geological data is like, well, gold dust, the company took a leap of faith (albeit under financial duress). Not only did they benefit from the power of many people working on the same project, but they had new methods brought to their attention.
“…entries came from surprising sources, including graduate students, consultants, mathematicians, and military officers, all seeking a piece of the action. ‘We had applied math, advanced physics, intelligent systems, computer graphics, and organic solutions to inorganic problems. There were capabilities I had never seen before in the industry,’ says [CEO Rob] McEwen. ‘When I saw the computer graphics I almost fell out of my chair.’ The contestants had identified 110 targets on the Red Lake property, 50 percent of which had not been previously identified by the company. Over 80 percent of the new targets yielded substantial quantities of gold. In fact, since the challenge was initiated an astounding eight million ounces of gold have been found. McEwen estimates the collaborative process shaved two to three years off their exploration time.”
Where analysis is more laborious, such as data mining, clubs could offer small rewards for completed tasks such as the Mechanical Turk available on Amazon.com. Video analysis is notoriously difficult save for those with vast amounts of money.
Online projects and initiatives are all worthy of discussion, but talk is cheap. In an age where smaller clubs have a lack of every resource available to large clubs and the stakes are increasing beyond reason, it will be a pioneering club who embraces the online community. Unlike sites such as MyFootballClub, there would be no obligation on the part of clubs to accept what is recommended to them, which makes the interactions so valuable. Like any other organisation, the good work is rewarded and efficiency improves.
Even more interestingly, an independent website could find that findings they produce through their online community have significant financial value. Whilst one team scouting the opposition is useful, an organisation scouting every team is invaluable. It would even have the potential to diminish the power of money alone that so dominates the upper echelons of football.
Who’s with me?
- Further reading - Wikinomics and a paper on online collaboration
March 10, 2008
The Internet - not content without football
8:39pm
Like the music and film industries before it, football is finding the transition onto the internet uncomfortable.
Any given 90 minute match can now become a week long event. The trend has been to add more coverage and punditry as issues and sub-plots are debated unabated. The venerable BBC is a victim of this approach such that a chosen Saturday afternoon match can be covered on the web via minute-by-minute commentary, live on the radio and should you choose, you can turn on the TV and watch someone else watch the match. All this, and not a ball in sight.
Challenged with the uneasy thought that the behemoth that has been created might not always yield exciting games (Grand Slam Sunday, anyone?), the reaction of media providers has been to discuss anything bar the ball. Managers, rivalries and squad selection riddle online news aggregators with superfluous information that has forgotten its purpose. As Ian Plenderleith notes in When Saturday Comes (issue 253), immediacy is replacing quality when it comes to web-based journalism in an era of omnipresent news that becomes dated almost as soon as it is written.
Meanwhile, live TV feeds from distant lands are providing thousands of internet users Premier League football for free (albeit illegally). Should someone lack the persistence to make out the fuzzy features and Chinese commentary, those helpful internet pirates will share the bounty on video sharing sites almost as they happen.
The reaction of those in control of football is the same as both the music and film industries – a response proven not to work. Threats of legal action against the very fans to which they market seem contradictory. People just want to watch the football and on the internet content is king.
Online piracy in football appears to be in its infancy. Whilst the days of Napster are long dead and iTunes rules supreme, football’s revolution could be right around the corner. Peer-to-peer streaming video is often poor quality and buffers at inconvenient intervals, whilst complicated broadcast contracts stifle the opportunity for those who are capable of delivering decent production online.
Consider the changes in the two mentioned entertainment industries. Consumers chose to forgo CD artwork and DVD special features to download millions of free songs. Football fans are now wondering how if a satellite provider charges £30 a month for sport but they can get it for free (and perhaps as importantly – if others are getting it for free), then there’s no value in the premium content.
However, the next lesson the industries learnt was that citizens are generally law abiding. If digital content is good value and it delivers what people really want in a convenient way, then they’ll generally pay for it. The theory holds even more currency when one considers that the music industry’s business model has recently flipped – now, the concerts are the revenue generators rather than just an opportunity to peddle the CD. In much the same way, if football can provide good value digital content, attendances are less likely to suffer. Online content is produced for a global audience, and not those within driving distance of the ground.
Ian Plenderleith highlights the official US league’s website MLSnet.com, which is bucking the trend in an attempt to gain traction online (and as result offline). Whilst it is an admittedly emerging league, there doesn’t seem to be much fear on the part of those in control that providing match highlights will affect attendances. One person sat in front of a computer screen does not mean one less empty seat in the stadium. Indeed, Toronto FC’s Director of Football Operations Paul Beirne notes that:
“there are more than 500 live games broadcast here on a multitude of channels. Some of them are pay-per-view but you can get more live football here than just about anywhere else on the planet”.
Toronto’s new soccer-specific 20,000 stadium the BMO Field sold out of season tickets in its first year and hosted 15 sold-out games.
Those who provide the content will inevitably struggle if they try to squeeze more web inches out of the same product. There are diminishing returns on pastiche punditry. Once the deleted scenes on a DVD run longer than the film itself (“over 4 hours of deleted scenes!”), the content that commands such a high price is devalued. Football may have to make the same mistakes to learn that lesson.
In providing the content, the powers that be must deal with the uncomfortable thought that it’s not about them. The best opportunity in the immediate future is to try and deliver their product in the best possible way to suit the viewers, and not just add more of it. As noted earlier, the BBC are attempting to provide as much content in as many forms as possible, but they are significantly hindered by the fact that they don’t have rights to any live Premier League football. It remains to be seen whether the likes of Sky Sports and Setanta will deliver online content that fills the void between free illegal internet streams and expensive subscription based TV coverage.
It’s their mistake to make, but football in any form will always be the people’s game in a consumer society,
- Interestingly, Techcrunch UK reported today that Sky, ITV and Five are looking to integrate their production with online social networks. Have I hit on something?
- Tomorrow I’ll post a piece on “The Wisdom of Crowds” and the capacity for online collaboration in football
Reflecting on glories past
7:53pm
Having not taken any photos whilst at the World Cup in the summer of 2006 I’ve been left to reflect on memories that fade and distort over time. I’m glad that I kept a blog that has helped preserve thoughts and images in the style of the Unphotographable blog.Some of my favourite thoughts are included here:
On Italy beating Ghana -
On my return to Köln it must have slipped my mind that Italy had just won the World Cup, or so it seemed. Hohezollernring was awash with Italians in cars, on mopeds and on foot flying their flags and bleating their horns. Chants were constant and the celebrating intense. Rather than winning the World Cup outright, they had merely beaten footballing minnows Ghana in their first match. It remains to be seen what celebrations will be like if the Italians do actually achieve something worthwhile.
On bouts of Schadenfreude -
I was beginning to doubt myself when I watched the Germany versus Poland game just outside the Schokoladenmuseum on the Rhine. I was with my German host and wishing for the Germans to win. It’s not that I have split loyalties, but rather I’ve developed a craving for that sense of euphoria you get with a mass celebration. Thousands of fans packed the space to watch the match and for one of the first times since the tournament began, Germans were in the majority.
On seeing God -
Today I went to the Temple of Gelsenkirchen for the game between Argentina and Serbia (& Montenegro). God was there. The clergy prayed, he preached, and a miracle occurred.
On English fans and German police -
I would first like to say that up until that moment and ever since, I thought the German police have been very accommodating and very lenient. In the same manner, virtually every single one of the English fans has provided England with a support they can be justifiably proud of. My only criticism is that when the moment came for either the English fans or the German police to step down in the heat of the moment, neither relented and a fairly small-scale skirmish occurred. The problem wasn’t the scale of the event, but rather the ease with which it happened.
On Portugal vs Mexico –
An early goal, a converted penalty, a crossbar hit, a headed corner, a red card, a skied penalty, but alas no equaliser from the Mexicans. After the game I asked my companions what they thought. “It had everything” they said, quoting all the above events, “except the equaliser”.
My reply was short, sweet, and summed up everything I’ve come to know ever since I kicked a football.
“So ist Fußball”.
On reflection -
I saw violence, joy, agony, jubilation, wonder, amazement and relief. I heard drums, air horns, car horns, chants, songs, cries, screams.
Ultimately it was a pilgrimage of sorts. It was expensive and extravagant. At times it was lonely, tiring and frustrating.
So now I’m home with the group stages not even complete yet. I have plans to sit down and see what the BBC theme tune for the World Cup is, what Leonardo is like as a pundit. I’ll update my wall charts and unravel my flags, and finally, when all is complete, I’ll reflect.
In translation -
March 05, 2008
Young Boys Bern vs Galatasaray
11:40pm
March 04, 2008
Inspire kids through sport
12:00am
There’s probably something morbid in giving children first-hand experience of being a Major League sports star for the day, but I’ll be damned if I know what it is.
Improv Everywhere descended on a Little League game in the USA and brought NBC TV crews with them, creating an atmosphere the kids will never forget. Awesome.
We collaborated with NBC Sports on this mission, and they took care of renting the jumbotron and hiring legendary sportscaster Jim Gray to call the game. Jim ran the play-by-play and I served as his color man. The two of us sat in a booth at the back of the stands, and we were able to make announcements on the field’s PA system. It was tons of fun watching the players react as the jumbotron rose in the outfield. The game had to momentarily stop as everyone settled down.
Video here. Watch for the one player milking his injury for the cameras. I blame Cristiano Ronaldo.
January 03, 2008
About Me
9:23pm
This summer I’ll be graduating from Nottingham University Business School with a degree in Management Studies. As a treat to myself I have offered my services as a volunteer at UEFA Euro2008, where I can develop my two main interests: football and visiting German-speaking countries.
In the meantime I’ll be feverishly hunting for a job. I’m interested by marketing, web design and effective writing - but mostly I just want to work somewhere interesting that is aiming to do good work.
Contact me at hello@joewesthead.com or check out my del.icio.us page to see what I’m linking to. My C.V is available on request & if you’re going to be in Zürich in June for euro2008 get in touch!