Redefining the role of a sports analyst
When I look at the staff of a team, I think it’s important to optimise each role. Whilst it’s good that the head coaches have tactical authority, I think they shuffle their duties to focus primarily on man management and let analysts have greater involvement in building tactics. At the moment, you will find many analysts are interns and given the job of only cutting, setting up cameras and other manual tasks that aren’t too much about the analysis. I think this position needs to be given more importance and responsibility. We help by removing all of the non-productive tasks and give them time to think about the game. As these are the guys who are watching and reviewing tactics all day, they will have the best understanding of strategy that the team needs. — Luis, Bepro CEO.
What is the role of a modern-day sports analyst? We see it as the most untapped area within a football team’s backroom staff. You have the head coach, coaches, fitness coach, strength and conditioning coach, and goalkeeping coach, all of which have mainly physical responsibilities that can be done on the pitch. As for an analyst’s role, the work is done behind a desk. You will often find a lot of analyst roles held by interns. The reason for this is perhaps due to the amount of labour clubs find themselves requiring in order to begin the actual analysis process. Analysts spend so much time cutting and organising clips in order for the lead analysts to begin analysing. This is taking up too much time and this is a problem that Bepro has identified requires a solution. We remove all the non-productive aspects of their job and provide them with a platform in which their only focus is tactics. Everything is already done for them with a quick turnover, including the recording of the game. With Bepro, they even have the ability to live code and prepare analysis at half-time!
We believe that to have a successful coaching team, each role must have the freedom to focus on the job without having to worry too much about the preparation stages. We see the analyst role as an area that needs redefining because they spend too much time in the stage of preparing to analyse than actually analysing. Bepro allows coaches to focus only on football. The more time they have analysing and watching the clips, the greater their tactical knowledge becomes. Right now, the head coach and coaches lead the tactical strategies, and the analysts are more of a support role. But the head coaches may not utilise analysts enough in the current conditions as they are spending lots of time just cutting and organising. By removing this, they will gain so much more knowledge of the tactics which will build up their importance and perhaps we will eventually see head coaches taking their analysts as part of their backroom staff when they move clubs. This is how we will redefine the role of an analyst.
