AZ and it’s use of computer analysis

Reckers, left, to Kees Luijkx: see…that was their goal, you idiot!

It’s Monday evening and AZ Alkmaar striker Ari is watching a clip on his laptop. Ten minutes of high lights and low lights of his own performance against De Graafschap. What went wrong, what went well?

The clip was edited especially for him and a couple of times per week a clip like this is prepared for him. Ari can log in via the internet, at home. At the club or en route.

The server registrers the number of visits of Ari, as it does for all AZ players. “Ari doesn’t always watch it. And he doesn’t have to, of course. When he has scored, he doesn’t log in,” laughs Max Reckers, video analist at AZ. “Niklas Moisander, for instance, logs in every day. He wants to learn and really analyzes himself. He’s a student at the University of Football.”

Seven days per week, at all games, all training sessions and all team talks and analysis meetings, the camera’s roll in Alkmaar. Louis van Gaal is an innovator. Always has been. Feyenoord and Heerenveen are at the forefront as well, but nowhere the level of technology is so advanced or so well integrated as at AZ. Reckers is sure of himself.

“We are part of the technical staff,” explains Reckers who made his mark in field hockey and works at AZ full time since 2007 with buddy Kees Ververs. “Louis is the professor, and we help create the ideal learning environment for him.”

Does this result in more points? Can AZ win the title thanks to this? Reckers is sure again: “No. Last season, we did the same thing and we had a horrible season…”

In the players’ home, Kees Luijcks is watching himself on a huge Apple screen. How did he act at turn arounds? Where did he run when AZ lost possession? Van Gaal can analyse the images with one touch of a button. How many yards does Luijcks allow his opponent to be unmarked…

Reckers: “Van Gaal is a top manager, who really grasps what technology can do. He tells us what he wants, and we create it. I’ve never met anyone who is so pragmatic in transforming his vision into workable processes.”

Van Gaal needed five minutes to tell Reckers what he wanted. “He said: football is this: we have the ball…we lose the ball….now we win the ball back… That’s what it’s about. I want you to show me what we do when we have the ball, how we lose it and what we do to get it back. See you later… I didn’t sleep for four nights, but then I got it.”

This is how it works: two weeks before a certain game, Reckers downloads the recent game images of an opponent. We then make a ten minute summary of how they play, using the scouting reports of the scouts. Louis is the director. He tells us what he wants to show the lads.”

“A few days before the game, we look at the clip. Van Gaal uses the images in his tactical training sessions. We tape those sessions and use these for Louis later in the talks. And that cycle repeats itself, until we actually play against the opponent.”

The clip with the training sessions is then broadcast via internet. “The players can watch it again at home. Sometimes they’re tired after a training and aren’t as open as we wanted them to be. Later, at home, they can take it all in again.”

After every match, staff and players get together pre-training. “We debrief each other after the game. Sometimes, we do it in the bus after an away game. I always travel with the team and I always have images to show Van Gaal. Sometimes, he sees something on the laptop in the bus and immediately calls the player to show him what went down.”

Reckers thinks Van Gaal is an extraordinary coach. “A normal person can remember ten things per game in detail. Maybe fifteen. Van Gaal’s mind holds on to hundreds of details. I’m not exaggerating here! We have to see it ten times in a row to spot it, Louis sees it immediately. He’s got a tremendous eye for detail. He knows exactly what a player did in a given situation, sometimes he sees it better than the player who was actually in that situation!”

Reckers is delighted that AZ has Van Gaal as coach. “And that applies to me as a person as well. I mean, if Van Hanegem was our coach, he’d probably fire me, with all this modernistic stuff, hahaha…”