Personal analysts, what is their job about? One of the A2M Services

Telling about it on the example of our work with the goalkeeper from Sweden top Division, Filipp Voytekhovich. Story of Filipp, results of our work, some figures of the season and a little bit of atmosphere from Atalanta - Inter match.

During july of the current year, I have been contacted by Filipp Voytekhovich - the main goalkeeper of IFK Varnamo, the club of Swedish top division. Filipp saw in the internet the webinar that has been organized by the goalkeeper coach of FC "Ural" ANDREY SHPILEV and in which I was a speaker with a topic of how we can use statistics in the preparation of goalkeeper to a match. (Link to the webinar - for Russian speakers)

My main idea of that webinar was that, when we plan a microcycle, we can make an analysis of an opponent and make corrections to the preparations of goalkeeper to the match upon what is more likely to happen in the game. How an opponent scoring goals, from which zones and where the ball is distributed, specific qualities of players from attacking group, set pieces etc. That report was just an example how we can structure the information and how we can use in for our needs. Reports that I was making for Filipp were very different but the idea is still the same.

When the season of Swedish Allsvenskan has finished and the team of Filipp saved the spot in the league, I took an interview from him where I asked him, how he came up to a need of pre-match and post-match analysis, how he evaluates benefits of our work with him. Also I asked him to tell about his football journey in that scandinavian country.

Hello, Filipp! Please tell, how the option with the move from Belarus to Sweden raised up and how you ended up there?

I moved to Sweden in 2011 and started playing football in 2012 in the 2nd league (3rd tier). The way I moved there was very simple, I packed my bag and traveled to my mom and sister, who have been already living there for about 10 years at that moment. I settled at their house and started to search for clubs or people who can help me with that. For around half a year I didn't have a club and only in 2012 I found a team. By the way straight at the beginning I had an option with Djurg?rdens IF.

I was 20 years old at the moment when I moved to Sweden in the status of Belarus youth national team goalkeeper but my contract with the Belarusian club has already expired. I was under a training compensation and upon the coefficients it was around 300k euros to be paid for signing me. As I was leaving the club not at the best circumstances, the club took a fundamental position and declined to give any reductions, saying: "You either pay out the whole amount of compensation or forget about football" (After 23 years players are released to pay training compensation). After that people that knew how it works helped me and advised that the 2nd league of Sweden has semi-professional status and the training compensation is not applicable there and I started to play for clubs in that league.

It turns out, that, before turning 23 I was playing in Swedish 2nd league, but at some point I felt that I miss home and my friends and I returned to Belarus for one year. During that year I realised that it's better to miss home but be settled in Sweden and I came back. At the end it was that I was mostly playing in the 2nd league, even couple of times I showed up in 1st league, but in general I didn't play regularly at any club. In 2017 I played only 1 official match in the 1st league, playing for the 2nd team of the club for the rest of the time. In 2018 I decided to step back and started to play in the 3rd Swedish league. In the new team finally I became the first choice goalkeeper and played a whole season in that status. We have won the 3rd league with the team and got promoted to the 2nd, in the other hand in 2017 before that, I haven't played any games for IFK Varnamo and left the club (current club). In 2018 it turned out, that IFK Varnamo lost the spot in 1st league and got relegated to the 2nd league and called me back. I returned there with an experience of playing 1st choice goalkeeper in the 3rd league, although, looking back at that time I understand how illogical it was. We have just won the 3rd league with the team and Varnamo was just relegated from the 1st league to the exact same 2nd league. At that moment, I was on the uprise and had a good position in the club, I could have stayed and carried on playing in the same club. To be honest, the move was made because of my wife, at that point we were in the process of getting necessary documents to prolong our stay in Sweden and we were forced to move from Stockholm to Varnamo, because it was easier to get the documents there. From that point I became a proper player of the squad, although, I should say that I had different period, we can check with the stats, I was playing 21 or 25 games a season or have been sitting on the bench, even I was asked to leave a club at some point, only last and current season I was a definite number one choice for the team.

Can you call this year as a breakthrough year in your career?

Probably, I would say that the breakthrough year was the last one, we have won the 1st leave unpredictably for everyone and got promoted to the Allsvenskan. Even last year I have been starting as the 2nd choice goalkeeper and didn't play first three matches. Our main goalkeeper caught COVID and I got a chance to play. I played 5 or 6 games in a row with a clean sheets and hasn't been substituted after that, at the end of the season we have been promoted to the top league. In the current season I have played 27 matches in the league and stopped at 99 official matches for IFK Varnamo, but probably they don't know about that.

Tell what do you see as the main differences in approaches to the training process in Belarus and Sweden, was there something that shocked or impressed you?

First of all, I have to say that, the period I was training in Belarus was long time ago. I haven't been to Belarus for 10 years now and haven't took part in any training processes there, probably, lots of things have changed there, so I'll be speaking about what I faced at the period when I just moved to Sweden. There wasn't something particular that shocked me, at that moment I joined semi-professional team, but we had some experienced player that have played in Swedish top division, the level was quite high. Only thing that impressed me was the availability of different equipment like boots, kits, goalkeeper gloves. You could have got them at any time you need and in any quantity, also we had a special person who took care about all our clothes and equipment, washing and preparing them for us. Coming to the changing room everything was already in your locker.

So, even on that level there is a proper, advanced organisation?

It is like that everywhere in Sweden, even in the 5th leagues, the professional approach to the team organisation is applied.

Probably it will be hard for you to imagine a situation that happened recently in Russian Premier League. It was Spartak Moscow playing against Fakel, Promes presented his shirt to Bryzgalov and asked his shirt in exchange. The player of Fakel replied that he has only one so he can not present it to him. Only after several matches Bryzgalov managed to present his shirt to Promes.

I can remember the period when I was back to Belarus for a year. I was playing in 1st league for a team Retchisa. After every training I was washing my staff in bath, the club was renting a 3 bedroom flat for 3 players but we didn't have a washing machine. The field we were playing on were very muddy and I needed to fill up the bath with water and keep my clothes there and wash them. After playing in Sweden for sometime it was bit strange, but it's fine, I survived somehow.

Periods like these makes you stronger, no doubt.

Regarding the main differences I can name psychology - it's completely different. Here everything is easier, everyone taking thing more calm, we are, for sure, completely different to them. For us we have more discipline, more pressure, we are forced to do many things and everyone is pointing out your mistakes even you can be bullied by your partners or coaches, here in Sweden it's very hard to imagine. Last year I had a situation, while we were fighting for a promotion to Allsvenskan for a first time in the history of the club, I was receiving a ball and decided to play low ball between the lines and i made a mistake - the ball was intercepted, but the coach was applauding and shouting to me: "Well done!", he was appreciating me for playing with creativity.

In general I can point out the psychology, infrastructure and organisation as main differences. Regarding infrastructure, here in Varnamo we have only 16 thousand population and 20 thousand in whole region. We have here 5 natural grass fields and 1 artificial grass field, plus the stadium. Even children of all ages starting from U7-U8 play all summer on the natural fields, which agronoms take care the same as the field of the main team.

All these belongs to the IFK Varnamo structure or some of it is managed by the commune? ?

Honestly, I don't know, who is in charge of it, it could be both the club and municipality taking care and managing it. At the moment a new stadium that meets all requirements for Allsvenskan is being built for us, they build it with a help of our commune. The total costs are around 20-30 million euros and the club can not cover it all by themselves. As we have been promoted to the top division they started preparing all necessary documents and primary works, now they have started to build the stadium itself. The stadium won't be huge rather compact, about 6-7 thousand people. We all hope that we will be able to start the season 2024 on the new stadium.

Please tell, how the analytical preparation for matches is organised in IFK Varnamo and in Sweden in general, on the levels you have played on?

At the levels I have played on, especially in lower leagues, there were no analytics at all, these functions were taken by the head coaches, we only had operators that filmed the games for us. Young coaches always did theoretical sessions and were saying about how the opponent plays. For example, when I played in 2nd league our coach was Jonas Thern - the legend of Sweden, participant of World Cup and Euro semi-final, he has played in Napoli, Rome and Benfica. Under him, we didn't have any analytics, he is old styled coach. Only when he made a promotion for the club from the 2nd league to the 1st, he hired a young coach from Copenhagen U19 team, who was 32 at that point, as an assistant coach, to prepare analysis for him. That was in year 2019-2020. I think that for coaches with that background and experience many things are very obvious, they don't need any analysis or additional information, where we need that deep analytics. Right now in IFK Varnamo, sure, we have an analyst that prepare information for a team, but especially for me he does not share any specific information, that's why I was searching for someone who would help me to prepare for matches through analysis of the opponents.

How did you come to the point, that you lack in tactical preparation before the matches, how did you understood it?

I really like the Russian goalkeeper school, the ideas goalkeeper coaches express, surely, it's Kafanov Vitaliy. I have watched all webinars, read all articles and interviews, also it's goalkeeper coach of FC "Ural", ANDREY SHPILEV . Moreover there are now some bloggers that come to different clubs and show the training processes, for example they visited Sergey Kozko at Rubin Kazan, again ANDREY SHPILEV at Ural and Kafanov at Rostov. I am very interested in it, how they share their philosophies and ideas. I subscribed for the blog of Ural goalkeeper coach and found the webinar where you were the speaker with the topic about using statistics for goalkeeper match preparation on the example of Lokomotiv - Zenit match for the Supercup. I found it very interested and started to search for services like this for goalkeepers. I found some options, but no one was answering me, then I decided to write direct to you. Found you in instagram and we got in touch. I remember we made a call and as a trial we prepared for one of the matches and the result was awesome. In the match we should have lost in all cases, we were playing away Hammarby on the 25 thousand stadium against the team where just one player is paid like our whole team and we won 1-2, they have only managed to score at the very end from the penalty. I was named the man of the match and appeared in the Allsvenskan team of the week. After that I came up to the club management and told them about our experience and club approved me a little money to pay you, so we could carry on working together.

After 12 matches we have worked together, please tell, what do you think is the benefits of our work and how it affected your play?

First of all, I have to stay, that the GK reminder itself is quite general, after studying it you get only general idea of the opponent, but not the full image. I found very effective approach for myself, combining GK reminder with watching 1-2 full games of the opponent afterwards through the prism of thing I saw in the report provided. It is way easier to spot the patterns and principles that you mention in the gameplay of the teams this way and at the end you get a full image. During trainings I keep all things we point out in my head and I am trying to put corrections in my movements and actions. I found very effective the combination of GK reminder and watching a full game afterwards. I need to say that watching matches from Tv broadcast won't give the needed effect, that's why I watch it using Spiideo . (All teams in 1st and 2nd tier in Sweden are equipped with this recording system on their stadiums and training grounds, they are provided with different camera perspectives to watch the footage: panoramic, tactical, behind the goal views. All teams have full access to recordings of games)

Going back to the game, there are some episodes when you don't have time to think how to play in the moment, but we go over that episodes in the GK reminder, then I see them in the matches I watch and on the inner consciousness you understand what is going to happen, anticipations starts to work and you forestalling the moment.

There was another thing that could have helped us to benefit even more. We could have establish a contact with goalkeeper coach and make corrections to the training microcycle knowing how the opponent plays.

When we were preparing for Hammarby I came up to assistant coach and we have made some changes, which probably helped me to play that good in that game. Unfortunately, the contact with the goalkeeper coach was not that stable, I was sharing with him all the reports, but for him probably it was quite difficult to integrate things that were mentioned in our trainings as he is more old-styled coach. I agree that with this the effect could have been even better. Let's see how it will be in the new season.

Thanks, Filipp, for answering all my questions!

Coming back to the work we have made with Filipp, I will show how the reports that I prepare look like, will tell in general how our work was structured and will make comparison analysis on the figures of the season, before and after we started our cooperation.

Usually I prepare reports in the beginning of the week, tuesday or wednesday, so goalkeeper has time to go over it and can train with the information provided about the opponent in his mind. After I sent it and goalkeeper study it, we make a Zoom call together to discuss the report, sometimes I prepare little clips, if I want to point out some specific patterns in the play of the opponent. In each block of the report I leave little comments to make information easier to understand. During the report preparation I use event data and off course I watch episodes with my eyes to give an objective evaluations to the gameplay of the team. Some of the graphics can not be done at all without watching game episodes.

I would divide my report on four main sections: General information about the team; Zones and destinations of ball distribution; Finishing; Set pieces. On the first slide I give general information about the team inside the league, current form, main formation and general statistics of the team. Main formations of the team give us understanding in which module the attacking group plays, will it be the only striker playing against or it will be a two or three striker goalkeeper needs to resist. Then, I show how the team attacks in general, how they score their goals and through which zones they progress their attacks.

In the next section I talk about ways and zones of ball distribution. For a goalkeeper it is crucial to understand how crosses will be executed, will it be inswing or outswing, how team prefers to distribute the ball, will it be regular crosses or more likely goalkeeper will face low-driven crosses, also which zones are preferred for distribution. Another thing I mention is players responsible for ball distribution on the wings, which foot is leading for them.

Next section is finishing. I attach shot maps of opponents and highlight patterns and particular ways of finishing. The last section is set pieces, we talk about corners, free-kicks and throw-in plays if needed. In this section we come again to what type of distribution it will, inswing or outswing, where these crosses go to and does the team has any routines, also we are interested in set piece takers, their leading foot. At very end of the report I also define the most threatening players and point out their strong game qualities.

As you can see the report itself is quite general, I would say that my work is about to structure all information on 2-3 slides and make this information very easy to perceive and understand. Everyone of us can open a very well known providers of statistics and take the data and graphs, it will take couple of hours to make it. In my reports goalkeeper gets all information with comments and explanations on 2-3 slides and it takes about 15-20 minutes to go over it.

For a post-match analysis we also do a Zoom call and go over particular episodes watching video clips, if needed I add some graphics on it.

Comparison analysis of Filipp's game figures before and after our cooperation

When I have made a comparison analysis, it was a pleasure to see that most of the values have gone up, you can see green arrows next to those. We started our cooperation exactly at the middle of the season, after the 15th matchday.

What impressed the most is that the average number of shots that Filipp has faced in the second half of the season has raised comparing to the first half, 16,8 against 13,1, also the average number of shots on target has raised, 6,6 against 4,8. Usually, when the sample of event data is bigger, values go down, even unsignificantly, for Filipp it is the other way round. Filipp concede less goals, saved more shots and supersaves, xG conceded (expected goals conceded) of the second half of the season also raised, but Filipp started to concede less goals and played more effective overall.

There are many different factors, direct and indirect, for example the experience collected in the first half of the season. What we have came to with Filipp is that, when you dedicate more time to your preparation, analysis of opponent - you feel more confident on the field, inside you understand that you have been preparing to that and it gives you this extra confidence in yourself. Anticipation and forestalling also comes on a higher level, that is what Filipp also said himself.

There is no direct relationship between our work and these improvements in Filipp's game, but for sure this work gave a big contribution to these results of the second half of the season and confident play of Filipp.

At the end of this article I would like to share little clip from Seria A match of Atalanta - Inter Milan, which we have visited with Filipp

It was a fortune that after working 3 month remotely we have met in Italy and visited Bergamo.

I will personally appreciate any comments and discussion in the comments and will answer everyone.

Also if you are interested in that service you can request it at the A2M Football Agency where I work as a Head of Analytics!

Feel free to contact us!