Prozone - how does it work?

Has anyone here used Prozone, or knows how it works? It's that fancy system which became famous after Allardyce was using it extensively at Bolton, and now practically every club in the Premiership is using it. Parks just posted an article in the Man. Utd. thread, of which one bit caught my eye:

Look at Giggs, he's flying this season. He came on at Reading last Saturday and the stats show that he made 45 sprints in the second half.

I assume Prozone collects these kinds of stats...but how? Do the players wear some kind of tracking device? Or are there a whole range of detectors beneath the pitch? Surely it's not just some club staff member watching every player and making a note each time they make a sprint or touch the ball?

I thought you were talking about the protein shake for a second there.

how about this: http://www.pzfootball.co.uk/

110% wrote:how about this: http://www.pzfootball.co.uk/

Browsing through that right now, but it would also be nice to hear from anyone who's actually used it...I know a few posters here have been with professional clubs at youth level, so maybe they have an idea...

the web-site is a bit Cr@p as regards to how they do it

From what I can gather, they set up cameras in certain locations and make videos of different areas of the pitch. Software allows the tagging of players, so for example giggs can be tagged, in the video segments and then the software follows his movement within that video segment, how many runs he makes, how fast, how far etc. Then they put everything together. Looks like they need an analyst to actually do all the techincal stuff with the cameras and software, so it's not just a case of buying it and off you go.

kas wrote:

110% wrote:how about this: http://www.pzfootball.co.uk/

Browsing through that right now, but it would also be nice to hear from anyone who's actually used it...I know a few posters here have been with professional clubs at youth level, so maybe they have an idea...

Prozone will measure output of a footballer, initially as statistics which can then be provided as graphs etc.

It is designed to be an impartial representation of a players performance, it provides no real analytical information, this is to be interpreted by the reader, the value of the data collected is dependant on the person analysing it, so if i gave it to Parky for example we'd get a whole load of nonsense in response, if you give it to somebody who can analyse impartially the data is useful to see how much more you should expect or look to extract from a player.

110% wrote:the web-site is a bit Cr@p as regards to how they do it

From what I can gather, they set up cameras in certain locations and make videos of different areas of the pitch. Software allows the tagging of players, so for example giggs can be tagged, in the video segments and then the software follows his movement within that video segment, how many runs he makes, how fast, how far etc. Then they put everything together. Looks like they need an analyst to actually do all the techincal stuff with the cameras and software, so it's not just a case of buying it and off you go.

Yup it seems like you have to have video cameras around the ground, and then these use image processing to track a player. Some sophisticated technology.

kas wrote:

110% wrote:the web-site is a bit Cr@p as regards to how they do it

From what I can gather, they set up cameras in certain locations and make videos of different areas of the pitch. Software allows the tagging of players, so for example giggs can be tagged, in the video segments and then the software follows his movement within that video segment, how many runs he makes, how fast, how far etc. Then they put everything together. Looks like they need an analyst to actually do all the techincal stuff with the cameras and software, so it's not just a case of buying it and off you go.

Yup it seems like you have to have video cameras around the ground, and then these use image processing to track a player. Some sophisticated technology.

Motion tracking has been around for two decades...

Lee Dickson wrote:

kas wrote:

110% wrote:the web-site is a bit Cr@p as regards to how they do it

From what I can gather, they set up cameras in certain locations and make videos of different areas of the pitch. Software allows the tagging of players, so for example giggs can be tagged, in the video segments and then the software follows his movement within that video segment, how many runs he makes, how fast, how far etc. Then they put everything together. Looks like they need an analyst to actually do all the techincal stuff with the cameras and software, so it's not just a case of buying it and off you go.

Yup it seems like you have to have video cameras around the ground, and then these use image processing to track a player. Some sophisticated technology.

Motion tracking has been around for two decades...

Yes, but to actually get it working to where the cameras can identify individual players and consistently track them throughout a match is complicated stuff, especially with all the chaotic background elements like a crowd of other players, a moving ball, people in the crowd, etc. I know from personal experience, having had some experience with image processing software. I wouldn't be surprised if these Prozone systems cause tens of thousands, if not more, pounds.

It mostly measures athleticism and athletic effiency.
And completely unable to quantify: vision, patience, being/waiting at the right spot at the right time, anticpation etc.

Using these tracking devices would be completely lost on a player like Pirlo, Riquelme or RVN for example. All three are different players on different positions, but none of them would come out favourably with prozone.

Those tracking devices are more for the runners in the team.
And even so they lack the abilty to distinguish between a knock and run player or someone who can outplay/dribble a player on the pitch.
Let alone the hard workers who cannot trap a ball.

Hardly the panacea, and it does not surprise me that someone like Allerdyce swears by a system like this. It only measures pace and hardwork, and is completely unable to quantify finesse, flair and vision. Aspects of the game that are rarer to find.

It can, however, improve certain players I'm sure.

kas wrote:Has anyone here used Prozone, or knows how it works? It's that fancy system which became famous after Allardyce was using it extensively at Bolton, and now practically every club in the Premiership is using it. Parks just posted an article in the Man. Utd. thread, of which one bit caught my eye:

Look at Giggs, he's flying this season. He came on at Reading last Saturday and the stats show that he made 45 sprints in the second half.

I assume Prozone collects these kinds of stats...but how? Do the players wear some kind of tracking device? Or are there a whole range of detectors beneath the pitch? Surely it's not just some club staff member watching every player and making a note each time they make a sprint or touch the ball?

No lie- I used to work for Prozone as a tracker during University.

We would work 9pm until 7 AM on Saturday night working on a segment of a match which involves 7 or 8 cameras around the ground and saved onto a computer system, and track every player, and the ref and linesmen.

This would give a 2D representation of the entire game, rather like the engine used for Footy Manager.

Another "team" would then map out the "incidents" of the game - ie watch the same video, but input when a pass, shot, header, corner, freekick, goal was scored etc.

The end results would be a 2D representation of the entire game, with choosable statistics for every player covering every concievable action.

Its actually not half as technical as it sounds - they employ part timers to do much of this work

I used to work at bolton wanderers from 2000 to 2004 in the video analysis team. I mainly used SportsCode but i got a good insight of ProZone.

a number of cameras are placed on the edge at the top of the reebok stands pointing down and fixed to a specific area of the pitch. eg. camera 5 may only look at the area around a corner spot and part of the 18 yard box, the cameras therfore do not move and follow the game. Each camera is linked to its own computer and video recorder.

Each tape from each camera was then sent up to leeds uni for the sports science students to track the players/ref/ball etc with a mouse. students would be sat there for hours just watching a screen, students would do all prem games that had prozone too, not just bolton. the matches and stats are then sent back to the club prozone specialist who works on the stats that the managers may want to see. this is all done before monday morning and stats were normally distrubuted to players and coaches on the tuesday afternoon along with sportscode analysis.

every statistic is linked to a part of the game, e.g. if you want to see the sprints of Kevin Davies, just click on sprints and a video stream of each sprint will be shown. its a very good system and the guy we had a at bolton was excellent with it. he followed allerdyce to newcastle.

gspo20 wrote:I used to work at bolton wanderers from 2000 to 2004 in the video analysis team. I mainly used SportsCode but i got a good insight of ProZone.

a number of cameras are placed on the edge at the top of the reebok stands pointing down and fixed to a specific area of the pitch. eg. camera 5 may only look at the area around a corner spot and part of the 18 yard box, the cameras therfore do not move and follow the game. Each camera is linked to its own computer and video recorder.

Each tape from each camera was then sent up to leeds uni for the sports science students to track the players/ref/ball etc with a mouse. students would be sat there for hours just watching a screen, students would do all prem games that had prozone too, not just bolton. the matches and stats are then sent back to the club prozone specialist who works on the stats that the managers may want to see. this is all done before monday morning and stats were normally distrubuted to players and coaches on the tuesday afternoon along with sportscode analysis.

every statistic is linked to a part of the game, e.g. if you want to see the sprints of Kevin Davies, just click on sprints and a video stream of each sprint will be shown. its a very good system and the guy we had a at bolton was excellent with it. he followed allerdyce to newcastle.

Thanks for posting that. It is really interesting. What's the difference, then, between ProZone and SportsCode?

I know Celtic use it, or should I say Strachan loves it, to analyse the performances of their players.

I would use it. I realise it doesn't necessarily tell you everything you need to know about what constitutes a good, effective performance, but I think it would give you an idea of who is working hard for the team, or who is following your tactical instructions.

I know Strachan used it to poo poo reports that Nakamura was Celtic's laziest player. By releasing the ProZone figures, Strachan proved that Nakamura ran further than any other Celtic player during a match.

He probably used it to discover Thomas Graveson was not following his positional instructions - or Strachan just used his eyes.

Cheers

I wish we'd have had those stats at Boro so I could have proven Yakubu did more running than most of the team...but everyone still said he was lazy.

DD wrote:It mostly measures athleticism and athletic effiency.
And completely unable to quantify: vision, patience, being/waiting at the right spot at the right time, anticpation etc.

Using these tracking devices would be completely lost on a player like Pirlo, Riquelme or RVN for example. All three are different players on different positions, but none of them would come out favourably with prozone.

Those tracking devices are more for the runners in the team.
And even so they lack the abilty to distinguish between a knock and run player or someone who can outplay/dribble a player on the pitch.
Let alone the hard workers who cannot trap a ball.

Hardly the panacea, and it does not surprise me that someone like Allerdyce swears by a system like this. It only measures pace and hardwork, and is completely unable to quantify finesse, flair and vision. Aspects of the game that are rarer to find.

It can, however, improve certain players I'm sure.

I may be wrong but I had always assumed that it also tracked the motion of the ball.

If this is true then it would provide some excellent evidence of vision and range of passing, for example, showing pass completion in the opponent's third, and time on the ball before picking out a pass.

Thanks gspo20, exactly what I wanted to know...so there is indeed a lot of manual labour involved, not only advanced image processing.