Opta Pro Forum 2019 review
As I approached the venue, a swanky conference hall near Euston station, I didn't know what to expect from a football analytics conference.
I've been to plenty of conferences; from barcoding equipment (bottom end of the scale for glamour), to document management software, to management consultancy shindigs, where you generally have to feign an interest in the topics being discussed and struggle to stay awake in those dimly lit lecture theatres. I knew that this wouldn't be an issue today.
As soon as I walked down the steps into the venue, passing a phalanx of young men with PSG and Arsenal logos on their badges I realised I was very fortunate to be invited to the conference. I collected my name badge and seeing only my real name on it knew I was cursed to stuttering introductions about how I blog and tweet under the name Stop Bunching.
We began the day with a coffee and small talk with fellow attendees. Being the type of person who writes internet blogs this is the part I usually dread but there were a lot of people attending on their own, and at least at a football analytics conference you are guaranteed to have a shared interest. I quickly met the very friendly and knowledgeable Daniel Krueger, from the University of Oregon. I think Daniel probably traveled the furthest to get to the conference today, and must be the only Huddersfield Town supporter from the States. We were joined by Ola Lidmark Eriksson, Ola runs a football consultancy and regularly appears on Swedish TV providing analysis. I became even more aware that this conference was a big deal with the calibre of invited guest and the distances people had traveled to get there.
The lectures began.
You'll be able to watch them soon so I won't go into too much explanation of them, just a quick summary.
Ben Torvaney was first and gave an excellent presentation on players and team styles. Clustering players and teams into groups by the sequences of play was a big theme this year.
Ben was followed by Carlos Rodriquez from Barcelona. Carlos is part of a huge analytics team at Barca, with presumably a huge budget as the work they had done on body positioning clearly needed very talented staff and a lot of work.
At the coffee break I met, in person for the first time, long time fellow Everton moaner Paul Riley (@footballfactman) and Richard Shephard (@thegingerpiglet) of "No fit state" podcast fame. We put the world to rights and played the role of proper football men asking whether the Barca model, as brilliant as it was, would add anything a good coach wouldn't already be able to spot? Perhaps, the Barca coaches certainly rated it.
The next two talks were by Andrew Rowlinson, on set pieces, who used spacial modelling to show the importance of movement on set pieces and the phases of play involved in set plays.
Joe Mulberry followed with some very impressive work on pattern recognition allowing you to cluster team and player styles together.
Finally,for the morning, there was a Q and A session with Pedro Marques of Benfica. Very impressive guy who stressed the importance of answering questions with data, rather than just data.
Lunch followed next and a chance to chat to some very interesting people, it was nice to see some familiar faces from twitter. Too many to mention individually but everyone was great.
The post lunch talks started with Mathieu Rosenbaum and Othmane Mounjid, finance experts from France, who had an interesting model which used financial modeling techniques to produce new data to effectively simulate games. Players were analysed and effectively their decisions were recreated. They used this to simulate the second half of the French league season and matched the table fairly closely. However it reminded me a bit of the luck in football article I posted recently as finishing positions fluctuated wildly in their simulated league tables.
Mladen Sormaz and Dan Nichol finished the football presentations with some excellent work on the importance of runs and how to give credit for a good run that doesn't get the pass it deserves. This was probably my favourite talk because I could see the problem it was trying to solve and the usefulness of the output.
We finished up for the day with a talk from Mike Fitzgerald. He works for the Arizona Diamondbacks and told us about how he thinks analytics is all about relationships. Use the data to answer sporting questions, show how data can improve individuals, everyone wants to get better, but approach with care. He also raised a lot of good points that chime with my own thinking about how you can't just improve one aspect of a team or player without a trade off in potential lost output in other areas.
Post conference drinks followed and I spoke to a few more people I've chatted to on twitter before. I even plucked up the courage and spoke to a few of the people affiliated to clubs, all of whom were very happy to chat about their work and welcoming of questions. I managed not to go on about set pieces too long to the Everton representatives (although we've conceded another as I write this!)
Finally many thanks to Ryan Bahia for the invitation and all those at Opta for the hospitality.
I've been to plenty of conferences; from barcoding equipment (bottom end of the scale for glamour), to document management software, to management consultancy shindigs, where you generally have to feign an interest in the topics being discussed and struggle to stay awake in those dimly lit lecture theatres. I knew that this wouldn't be an issue today.
As soon as I walked down the steps into the venue, passing a phalanx of young men with PSG and Arsenal logos on their badges I realised I was very fortunate to be invited to the conference. I collected my name badge and seeing only my real name on it knew I was cursed to stuttering introductions about how I blog and tweet under the name Stop Bunching.
We began the day with a coffee and small talk with fellow attendees. Being the type of person who writes internet blogs this is the part I usually dread but there were a lot of people attending on their own, and at least at a football analytics conference you are guaranteed to have a shared interest. I quickly met the very friendly and knowledgeable Daniel Krueger, from the University of Oregon. I think Daniel probably traveled the furthest to get to the conference today, and must be the only Huddersfield Town supporter from the States. We were joined by Ola Lidmark Eriksson, Ola runs a football consultancy and regularly appears on Swedish TV providing analysis. I became even more aware that this conference was a big deal with the calibre of invited guest and the distances people had traveled to get there.
The lectures began.
You'll be able to watch them soon so I won't go into too much explanation of them, just a quick summary.
Ben Torvaney was first and gave an excellent presentation on players and team styles. Clustering players and teams into groups by the sequences of play was a big theme this year.
Ben was followed by Carlos Rodriquez from Barcelona. Carlos is part of a huge analytics team at Barca, with presumably a huge budget as the work they had done on body positioning clearly needed very talented staff and a lot of work.
At the coffee break I met, in person for the first time, long time fellow Everton moaner Paul Riley (@footballfactman) and Richard Shephard (@thegingerpiglet) of "No fit state" podcast fame. We put the world to rights and played the role of proper football men asking whether the Barca model, as brilliant as it was, would add anything a good coach wouldn't already be able to spot? Perhaps, the Barca coaches certainly rated it.
The next two talks were by Andrew Rowlinson, on set pieces, who used spacial modelling to show the importance of movement on set pieces and the phases of play involved in set plays.
Joe Mulberry followed with some very impressive work on pattern recognition allowing you to cluster team and player styles together.
Finally,for the morning, there was a Q and A session with Pedro Marques of Benfica. Very impressive guy who stressed the importance of answering questions with data, rather than just data.
Lunch followed next and a chance to chat to some very interesting people, it was nice to see some familiar faces from twitter. Too many to mention individually but everyone was great.
The post lunch talks started with Mathieu Rosenbaum and Othmane Mounjid, finance experts from France, who had an interesting model which used financial modeling techniques to produce new data to effectively simulate games. Players were analysed and effectively their decisions were recreated. They used this to simulate the second half of the French league season and matched the table fairly closely. However it reminded me a bit of the luck in football article I posted recently as finishing positions fluctuated wildly in their simulated league tables.
Mladen Sormaz and Dan Nichol finished the football presentations with some excellent work on the importance of runs and how to give credit for a good run that doesn't get the pass it deserves. This was probably my favourite talk because I could see the problem it was trying to solve and the usefulness of the output.
We finished up for the day with a talk from Mike Fitzgerald. He works for the Arizona Diamondbacks and told us about how he thinks analytics is all about relationships. Use the data to answer sporting questions, show how data can improve individuals, everyone wants to get better, but approach with care. He also raised a lot of good points that chime with my own thinking about how you can't just improve one aspect of a team or player without a trade off in potential lost output in other areas.
Post conference drinks followed and I spoke to a few more people I've chatted to on twitter before. I even plucked up the courage and spoke to a few of the people affiliated to clubs, all of whom were very happy to chat about their work and welcoming of questions. I managed not to go on about set pieces too long to the Everton representatives (although we've conceded another as I write this!)
Finally many thanks to Ryan Bahia for the invitation and all those at Opta for the hospitality.
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