John Portch: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our Kitman Labs and Leaders Performance Institute podcast series. I’m delighted that you’ve been able to join the conversation, and I’m excited to pick your brains today.

John Portch: I think most people within high performance would agree that the approach to data and analytics in world soccer is shifting.

John Portch: Where the emphasis was previously on data collection, it’s now on intelligence creation, and so one could say that data informed decision making is now key.

John Portch: Stephen, could you please set the scene for us? Is that how you’d see it, data as a commodity where the value is extracting insights to inform practical change and action?

Stephen Smith: Well, I think that’s, I mean, that’s always been the the value provided or the the promise of of data within the industry. I think if we look back to ten years ago when we really started to see an explosion in, you know, the the wearable sensors and different types of technology that were coming into the sporting arena. There was the the talk of, like, the Moneyball era coming into sport and and what that was going to deliver and how that was going to revolutionize sport. And I think what we’ve seen is the reality is the last ten years has largely been based around cultivating, collecting, aggregating data and information, trying to bring it together with the hope that teams and and organizations and leagues can start to actually garnish real insights, real value, and real understanding from that.

Stephen Smith: And I I think the promise of data and information and analytics has always been to transform the way we we think about talent identification, to transform the way we think about talent development, of performance enhancement, of performance optimization, and and health optimization, and and building resilience in our athletes.

Stephen Smith: And I I think we’re we’re we’re starting to to see real breakthroughs because I think the quality of the data and information being collected is better than it’s ever been. The technology to bring it together is better than it’s ever been. And we’re we’re we’re I think we’re starting to enter a really, really exciting era within sports today.

John Portch: And you talk about those advances. You talk about the level of excitement there. And we’re seeing teams move away from a fragmented data strategy towards a a whole club approach, I think you could call it. We’re talking comprehensive data integration, holistic performance analysis, and even predictive analytics in scouting. So, Stephen, can you tell us what that term, a whole club data strategy, really means from your vantage point?

Stephen Smith: Yeah. Well, I think, again, to to flip back to where we were, I suppose, when I was working in professional sport before I even started this company was that everybody was trying to figure out within each of their departments, whether it’s the fitness department, the medical department, the coaching department, what types of data they can be collecting and how they kinda digitize essentially their area of the of the business and leverage that information to be able to understand what’s happening and and, you know, how how to improve that that kinda area.

Stephen Smith: I think what we’ve we’ve largely seen or and and and learned and experienced from that is that that that’s not enough. That being able to just understand what’s happening in our department doesn’t help us understand what’s happening for the athlete. It doesn’t create that three hundred and sixty degree view. It doesn’t allow us to understand how does what we’re doing in in training or practice impact how the athletes recover every day.

Stephen Smith: It doesn’t allow us to understand how what we do in training or practice impacts how athletes, like, perform at the weekend. It doesn’t allow us to understand how does, like, our coaching syllabus impact, like, the development of of our athletes. And I think it’s really only as we start to bring together that touching our recovery data off our training data that we can understand, well, how does training impact recovery? It’s the integration of two those two data sources that allows us to join those dots.

Stephen Smith: And I think what really smart and advanced clubs have been have been doing over the last number of years is thinking about their business as an entire ecosystem, thinking about the types of outcomes they want to support, thinking about the types of questions that they want to be able to answer, and then thinking about the data landscape, that they need to be able to actually answer those questions. And that that that’s led to, I think, an emergence of this whole club data strategy, this whole club approach. And, you know, the these things were when we think about technology selection, we think about the tools that we’re using internally at clubs.

Stephen Smith: It it really isn’t a departmental focus anymore. It isn’t for just for the fitness team to decide, hey. We’re going to use this product. It’s actually, well, how does this fit into our ecosystem?

Stephen Smith: How does that help us as an entire club to move forward? How does that allow us to achieve our goals or answer our questions?

Stephen Smith: And I think the best clubs in the world are are ones that are taking that big picture purview, thinking about those questions, thinking about those outcomes, and then thinking about the strategy needed to fulfill that.

John Portch What is a better term? Data informed or data driven?

Stephen Smith: For me, it’s it’s all about informed. I I don’t think data should be driving the conversation. I don’t think it should be driving the decision. I think practitioners and expertise drive decisions.

Stephen Smith: They have intuition. They have experience. You know, they they’re the ones formulating the questions. The data is there to basically help answer those questions and to validate or invalidate the thoughts that they have.

Stephen Smith: I personally don’t love the concept of data driven decisions. I think people drive decisions, and data basically helps us to inform those.

John Portch: Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And, Yael and Karl, I want to bring you both into the conversation at this point. And perhaps I can go to Yael first.

John Portch: Gotham FC won the NWSL championship in twenty twenty three, and you went very close again this year following another superb season. You’re one of the most highly regarded teams in world soccer. And to what extent do you attribute your success to leveraging data and analytics? Yes. We’re talking about the performance on the field, but also behind the scenes in terms of driving collaboration, eliminating information silos, generating shared information for evidence based decision making. I mean, the list goes on. Anyway, what role has it played for you and Gotham FC?

Yael Averbuch: It’s really interesting. Even already listening to you talk, I I’m I’m, learning a lot because I think, naturally, this isn’t gonna be a a shock, but I think the women’s game is behind, where a lot of the men’s game is in the evolution of the use of data, and it’s relatively new. Again, my experience, I come from a playing background. My experience with data was not a very positive one.

Yael Averbuch: It was only kind of brought out as evidence of poor performance, and data was often used kinda after the fact to justify things. So I’ve seen data in my own playing experience not used very well, to be honest, and I think there’s a few things about the women’s game and the evolution of how how fast it’s moving that have made it really important, that that we’re and we’re we’re trying to be, and and I wouldn’t say we’re there yet, but we’re we would like to be on the forefront in the women’s game in terms of the use of data. We’re still in the data collection stage in the women’s game and and certainly at Gotham FC.

Yael Averbuch: What what my experience over the last few years in working to create a successful team and what we’re going for is sustainable success is an understanding of the ways in which data can really benefit us in making decisions. And to the question of whether it drives the decisions or it informs the decisions, I think, I was able to work with Nathan Goldberg as, he was my assistant GM, and he’s a Harvard statistics and philosophy dual major, which is a very interesting take at the use of data. And I think what he opened my eyes to is the value of the things like intuition and historical knowledge and, and expertise and how you how how data can help you improve your ability to use those things.

Yael Averbuch: So in terms of narrowing focus, like, for the first time in the women’s game in recent years, the player pool goes far beyond what it used to. And so the idea that you would be searching for the the world for a player that fits, a specific profile is relatively new because before the the number of players who would maybe fit the profile at a really high level team, if you don’t know their name, they’re probably not out there, and that’s very different now. There are young up and coming players who we have been able to identify through data are good profile fits for our club and ones that we should continue to track and monitor.

Yael Averbuch: But there’s still a lot of information missing in the women’s game. There are leagues that we are not able to get data for. In terms of compiling our own data, we we don’t have a lot of information yet. So we were looking earlier this year at some injury trends, and we wanted to know if it was normal or if we had a problem.

Yael Averbuch: And it was still very, very hard to find that. So I think we’re at the beginning stages of starting to have access to, to data, not just about our club, but about how we compare in the world. And, really, for us, we’re we’re at the beginning of of a vision of how we use this. So I see a lot of exciting opportunity and potential, and definitely, we we take data very seriously at Gotham, but I would not say we have yet scratched the surface of how how it strategically will impact moving forward.

John Portch: It’s almost a case of watch this space when we look at the women’s game. Right?

Yael Averbuch: Yeah. I think it’s a huge we see it as a huge opportunity for us. And that’s why even here, I’m gonna be taking some notes as as you talk because I think, we don’t need to reinvent the wheel, but we need to decide how at Gotham it’s going to make us special and how we can create competitive differentiation through the use of data.

John Portch: Fantastic. And, Karl, I’d like to ask you the very same question ultimately. Bayer Leverkusen enjoyed the most successful season in its history last year. You won both the German Bundesliga and the DFB Pokal unbeaten.

John Portch: You’re also finalists in the Europa League and won numerous admirers along the way.

John Portch: In that journey, how much did data help?

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: My I start with my journey in professional soccer.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: I work now in professional soccer for almost twenty three years.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: And when I compare what we had, for what kind of data collections we had, it was pieces of paper.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar:Best what we had were Excel sheets. So, no data we could compare. No data we could follow-up.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: So nobody knew what where to find the data from the season before. So it was horrible when I started. So I came from the very, very beginning.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: And, we are on the journey with Kitman, since, I think, more than seven years. So, this was a system which we could fit for us perfectly. That for we’ve chosen, Kitman as a system.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: And I think, three years ago three or four years ago, we met in Dublin. And the data guys from Kitmann made, made a test where they told us when we use our players our first fifteen players or how many points we made using our first fifteen players. And he they made they made they found out how much players’ availability we we must have more to win the championship.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar:And I kept this, this, this data from, four or five years ago. And last year, we did it. And I I I fitted the data, the the the proposal from, from them from five years ago with this the the results, we had in the last year and it fitted perfect. So, what what they found out for us, what we need, from the medical point of view, from player availability, was perfectly right.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: So therefore, data helped us data predicted what would happen in the future and it did. Sometimes, data predicts something but will never happen. But here, it happened. So, data helped us a lot.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: It’s a little different in Germany in Germany because every team has its own data collection, so we can’t compare data with other teams. We have just for our team. It would be great like it’s in the US that if a league would have the same system we could compare with other clubs, it would exaggerate the the the value of data a lot. But this is, unfortunately, at this time, not possible because the the organization in in the German Bundesliga is totally different than in US leagues.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: So, but as I’m absolutely sure that data helped us a lot in our medical, point of view to predict and to prevent injuries. So, at the end, to have a better player availability and, if with with with better players or more top fifteen players, you have a better chance to to win a league, to win a cup, or to have a season like we had, in the last season. It was an incredible season. We were the first team in in the German Bundesliga who won the Bundesliga unbeaten. Never, another team had it before.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: And we, we hold the record in Germany in Europe for, for unbeaten, games in in a row.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: So, I think the last team, which were in our area was in nineteen sixty something.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: So it was an incredible season, and I’m absolutely sure that data is a part of it. But it’s not just data. It’s people who work with the data, and we have this I think in last season, we got this perfect combination, of people working with data. And last but not least, trusting coaches and management, us and data, that we could do what we wanted to do with with the players to prevent things, to prevent injuries. And this was made a great season possible.

John Portch: Yeah.

John Portch: Indeed. And what you’re really talking about there is a maturity in the way the club and each department in the performance team uses data when you are able to develop that trust and get that buy in from the coaching staff and the playing group as well. And I guess I’d like to go back to you, Yael. You, of course, in comparison at the start of your journey in instituting a sophisticated data and an and analytics infrastructure.

John Portch: But what were some of your original objectives, and what were you trying to accomplish?

Yeah. I think, so I love that story. I think, you know, for us, that’s the kind of information that an ideal world will eventually get to.

Yael Averbuch: It is interesting, you know, through Kitman, we also because, because now other NWSL teams use it, we like, as as data gets collected and we have, some historical data, we’ll also be able to compare ourselves and to understand in NWSL specifically, you know, what are the correlations for the teams who succeed and succeed year over year and what are the things similarly, what are the metrics we need to hit when it comes to player health and availability?

Yael Averbuch: I think we’re a little bit away from that now, but one one reason it’s been really helpful for us is the continuity. So we’ve had a good amount of turnover in our medical and performance staff. And in the past, someone comes and goes with their spreadsheets, kind of like you had pointed out, Karl. And now, I don’t know what we would have done this year, you know, without Kitman because we have everything in a in a central location, and it lives at the club level.

Yael Averbuch:So, you know, as as new new people work with the data and, eventually, you know, we wanna build up our analytics team to start to look into the data, but those things aren’t possible unless it lives in the central location. And the opportunity we have to also understand, what we’re able to see from other NWSL teams is really, really interested from a competitive standpoint. So I think for us, you know, our our big objectives right now are to create that strategy that you know, this is one thing I’ve learned very early on. There’s a million things you can look at.

Yael Averbuch: So what is your one focus? And, you know, it’s inspiring me to hear to to hear, you know, there could be a simple objective in terms of player availability or whatever it is. And and also, I think the prediction factor, like, before, if someone gets hurt and you can’t look back at the specifics of what they did in the lead up to that, you just kind of hope it doesn’t happen again. And we’ve had some some, some injuries where we honestly are still looking back and saying, oh, maybe, you know, here is an indicator that now we’ve seen a couple times.

Yael Averbuch: In the future, the next evolution for us is to actually prevent it from happening because we’ve noticed the trend in advance of the problem. But we’re still early on, so the the first thing is to have the learnings to then make the predictions and change our actions and our behaviors as a group to, avoid problems, but also to do the things that we know have the positive outcomes. And so we’re still early to define those things, but certainly having the centralized system has been, really wonderful us because we don’t have to keep starting over every time.

John Portch: Absolutely. And do you feel that you have complete buying from your ownership as well and feeding down from the ownership?

Yael Averbuch: Certainly. You know, now we have new ownership that comes from American football, and so, you know, I think, football football, as I’ll call it, is so I think has been, further behind other American sports and data because it’s harder to know what to look at. In some other sports, it’s I I think it’s easier to collect data. There’s more points, more more scoring, more things that easily have numbers associated. So for us to be able to translate real information on why we wanna do something strategically, it’s some it’s a world that our ownership understands very well, and they also have, you know, access to to people who have thought about this for years and years in another sport context. So I think it’s a very familiar, objective for us and something that they have an immense amount of experience in and really respect.

John Portch: Brilliant. And, Karl, I want to go back to you, if I may. You talked about being at Leverkusen for more than two decades, and I wondered in that time, how has the team’s objectives around data and analytics evolved as data has come to greater prominence? I mean, how closely have you been in conversation with the club when it comes to support for your efforts in your medical department? I mean, my sense in general is that the club is very on board of it and also that German football in particular is pretty open to innovations away from the pitch.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: With being open for innovation away from the pitch, I think you are not right.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: German football is very traditional, and German football is driven by by managers, by coaches, which, have kind of feelings, and they act by their feelings.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: It changes in the last five to ten years that data data collections, is the the coaches look more on it. And, very, very often, their their feelings, their what they think would be is right is right, became proofed by data, but sometimes sometimes not. And and to to show those those things where they were wrong or where they could be better. This is one of our objectives.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: And if you if you show them something and you, they they change something and the results improve, they start believing in data and they start believing in what you do and they start believing in in your in your whole team. But there are some innovations in in in in German football, but not so many. If you look on it historically, it was most of innovation came, for the World Cup in in Germany two thousand six, brought from the US to Germany. Before, it was it was real poor what what we did with data.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: And with in some teams, it’s still very, very poor. So a team like Bayer Leverkusen is is a team which is little ahead, in in using data. But, using a system like Kitman, there are not many teams, in the German Bundesliga who who do who does it.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: Most of them are still old fashioned on spreadsheets and so on. So this is an advantage for us that we do it, and it might be part of the reason we were successful in the last in the last season. It’s the first time we won titles for for decades, but, we were always a successful team. We were always in the top three or top four teams in the German Bundesliga.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: To win the title is is is the crown on on on on on your work, but it can’t happen every year. So, but we did continuously work to to reach this this, this crown, may I say. And, but, yeah, some some clubs look at Bayer Leverkusen how we did it because we are a small club, Leverkusen city with hundred sixty, hundred seventy thousand people. You have cities like Berlin with two millions.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: You have cities like Munich with more than one million, Hamburg and whatever. And we were number one. So it’s it’s quite a big thing for such a small team, such a small, city to win those titles. We we won last, last year, and it’s even more difficult to be for years in the in the top, in the European top twenty, I will say.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: And, yeah, this this data helped us a lot, and data made the team or the people around us, means coaches, management, etcetera, to understand what we are doing. We can show, we can prove, we can predict, and we can show in changes of data. So if we change training, because we had data which which, told us that we must change something. And if you see that it improves, that data changes, they it’s but it’s very, very tough to, it’s a hard work to, bring them to belief in data. And sometimes, if you get a new coach, you start right away, at the beginning. And, yeah, it’s difficult.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: Well, every day is a school day. You just educated me there on German football, and maybe there’s an incentive there for Stephen as well with Kitman Labs to have conversations with some of these other teams. But, Yael, I’d love to go back to you.

John Portch: No. Not not not don’t do don’t do that. We want we want to keep our advantage.

John Portch: I never talk about Forget I said that.

John Portch: But, Yael, as GM, how did you work to align different departments and stakeholders around your shared strategy? How did you achieve buy in? And Yep. Definitely.

John Portch: Oh, sorry. Yeah. How did you prove that your approach could work? Were there quick wins?

John Portch: And if so, how did you find them? Sorry. Couple of questions there.

John Portch: Yeah. I mean, certainly a work in progress. Yeah. By the way, we can’t make this podcast live because we’ll give away all the secrets.

Yael Averbuch: But, no. We’re we’re, I would say we are developing our strategy. So we haven’t, I would be naive to say we’ve made anything work yet. I think for us, we’re in a data collection stage, and I think what we need to do is decide the the focus areas and the ways in which we care about the data because to flood, yeah, to flood the coaches with all this information, to flood it into our organization without the thought and without going through it in a systematic way, I think, would be overwhelming and would defeat the purpose.

Yael Averbuch: So so far, the way we’ve used data has very much to do with, the medical performance and how and the implications that has on players’ training. So very simple things to say, you know, this player, last time this player hurt their hamstring, These were the kind of training loads they had experienced in the lead up. And to notice the trend, okay, we’re seeing that similar again. Coaches, we need to, you know, remove them from this part of training.

Yael Averbuch: And, of course, the coaches want their players available, so they respect this type of data. It’s very clear. It’s very obvious. It’s simple.

Yael Averbuch: But for us to have that the historic information and to collect it and that said, we know that this is a risk. Not we’re not just guessing because it looks red in the red zone, but we know it’s a risk, is is very powerful.

Yael Averbuch: I think for us, the next the next phase and what I would like to do is be able to predict trends in the game and to be able to because the women’s game is evolving so quickly, it’s a huge advantage to be able to predict the trends of where it’s going. When it comes to, evaluating player performance, especially, so when you think of recruiting players, understanding, our own players and which way their performance is trending is very important. We just got to the point in the women’s game where it’s it’s really an investment to bring a player. Contracts are getting longer.

Yael Averbuch: It’s there’s more money on the table, so the decisions are are heightened. And very much in the men’s game, you know, those things are already huge, huge decisions because of the financial implications. In the women’s game, it hasn’t been like that. So the ability to be more sure about our decisions and and seeing the data to back them up, but not just data that we create for the argument we want to prove, but to have the metrics that we always look at.

Yael Averbuch: So what are the things we care about when we look at, our ten you know, an ideal ten for Gotham? What matters? In what ways do they need to be able to move physically?

Yael Averbuch: And and what what are the the areas of the field they need to be successful in completing passes and how many opportunities that do they need to be creating. And then we can look at season over season as a player improving in those things. Is it going down? Is it leveling off? Is a player elsewhere in the world have similar type, type data we can bring in. But these are we’re we’re at very early stage of connecting the dots and all of this, and especially I’d say the physical and the technical sides where we’re we have gaps in our own understanding of marrying the two.

Yael Averbuch: But I think getting small wins is so important because, like Karl pointed out, you know, coaches and and different people from different departments have different historical, experiences with data. Maybe it was good, maybe it was bad. So at Gotham, for us to develop, here is our methodology and it’s shared and here are the things we trust, and we all agree to be truth so that there’s not the debate when we’re bringing it is really important. And we’ve done that with a couple things, like having to do I’d say the easiest, like I said, is the training loads and and predicting when people will be at their top performance and not risk injury.

Yael Averbuch: But, there’s a lot more that that we need to do. And I’m I I don’t I’m learning. This is not my personal area of expertise, so I need to work with people on our staff and work with Kitman who have a much better understanding than myself. I’m supportive of it, but I’m but I’m far from an expert.

John Portch: Well, let me go to an expert now, Stephen.

John Portch: I wanted to ask your opinion on the balance between helping clients to achieve quick wins versus building a longer term strategy. Obviously, you would like to deliver on both fronts, but how would you go about helping them to do that?

Stephen Smith: Yeah. I mean and, listen, I I I think you have to deliver on both. Right? I think this concept of data being this, like, future promise that delivers in multiple years and you need to collect data for years and years and years before you abstract value, that’s just not it’s not it’s not fair, and it’s it’s also not right. And and I think it’s, it’s sometimes, you know, a shield that people use to, like, defend themselves against the fact that, hey. There’s nothing that we can do right now because they don’t potentially understand.

Stephen Smith: I think there’s a couple of things I wanted to come back to. I thought what the I Yael said about the the concept of, like, the turnover in staff and the fact that, like, having a having a centralized system that allows them to have a consistent set of data. That is that’s really important with regards to your question as to, like, how do we deliver wins in the short term and in the law long term. And I think, historically, sport has been in a really poor state because, you know, I think as as you quite rightly said, staff will come in.

Stephen Smith: They have their spreadsheets. They have I have they warehouse all of the data from the club in a spreadsheet. They they move on with a coach, and they take all of that with them. And, like, that that in any other industry, that would never happen.

Stephen Smith: Can you imagine somebody walking into, like, a a large conglomerate business that’s valued at multiple millions, like what we’re talking about here, and having, like, the having the the some of the most valuable data about their people, about their business, about how it operates, and then they just walk in and out the door with with key pieces of information, and that’s gone. That is the intellectual property of these clubs. And if data is ever to deliver on the value that it potentially can for clubs, clubs need to have consistent, like, sets of data that allows them to go back and mine that information to understand what that means.

Stephen Smith: And I think, you know, again, what what Yael and and, you know, Doctor Dittmar said was that it was really important that we have a concept of success. We need to understand what what that success is. And that’s not the same for everybody. It’s not as, like it’s not just, hey.

Stephen Smith: We need to we want to win more games. There it’s obviously, that’s that’s the goal within sports is to be successful on the field. But what does that mean in terms of what are the outcomes that you’re trying to deliver from this? Is it about understanding how how player availability impacts the number of wins that you can deliver?

Stephen Smith: Is it about understanding the amount of money that you need to put on the field to deliver wins? Is it about understanding the return on investment that you’re getting for a player, like, Yael just mentioned in terms of making decisions about contracting, about making decisions about, like, what players that you want to bring to your club? And I think all of these are are areas that you can get into, but, you know, as soon as you open the kimono on one of those, you then need a lot more information. So I think you mentioned what’s the perfect ten for Gotham.

Stephen Smith: Well, that depends, doesn’t it? It depends on the strategy or tactics that the team like, how does the team want to play? What is the vision for for the organization? What style of football do they want to do they want to play?

Stephen Smith: And I think that that’s we need to define that. We need to understand those characteristics. We need to understand what that looks like. And I think if we understand from what the coach or the ownership group or the GM, what their belief for that is for the club, what the definition for that is for the club, then we can use data to basically understand that.

Stephen Smith: But we need to extract that from their brains. Right? And I think that’s where you can get small wins. You can get small wins by saying, okay.

Stephen Smith: Well, really quickly, we can do, we can do a piece of analysis across the market and showcase who the best fit tens are based on the playing style that you want. Over a longer period of time, we can start to evaluate how much that changes and, like, we can understand how do things like their own internal coaching impact the likelihood for them to be able to increase certain characteristics about players to make them more perfect for for Gotham.

Stephen Smith: But I think small wins sometimes are even helping. Yeah. The just mentioned that she’s not an expert in this field. Well, no.

Stephen Smith: Nobody is. And that’s also not the role of a GM. It’s also not the role of a head coach. They have strengths, in specific areas.

Stephen Smith: The role of partners like us is to come in and help them to basically cultivate that. So I bet if we sat down with the head coach at Gotham and, like, you know, the GM sporting director, some of the executive staff and chatted about what does the perfect game look like, what is it that you see. If you were to look at, like, the performance output data from that game and they played the perfect game, what would it say about them? And all of a sudden, we can start to craft a a vision for, and we can we can build a dataset that tells us these are the qualities.

Stephen Smith: This is where somebody sits, and this is what great looks like. Now all of a sudden, we have a canvas that we can go back and start to analyze data, whether it’s internal at Gotham or whether it’s data that’s publicly available, and we can start to identify the talent that fit that model and that shape. And that, like, that’s a very easy, simple win to be able to deliver in a short period of time for specific topic, but we can’t do that without understanding what success is.

John Portch: It’s interesting to hear you describe that. And, Yael, do you feel that having access to such information or data when it comes to recruitment is informing your conversations and taking those conversations themselves to a more sophisticated level.

Yael Averbuch: Yeah. Absolutely. And I think at the same time, we need to be careful as to, like, the the order in which we do things and how we use the data. The way that we have used data largely is to narrow our look at the at the pool of players available.

Yael Averbuch: And from there, we need what we call the eye test. Like, then we need to actually watch visually, because data can be can unlock a hidden gem of a talent or can be extremely misleading. So, for example, if we see a player has very good data in a certain league, we’ve had we’ve had a an attacking player we’ve looked at and scored a ridiculous number of goals and had a system. We noticed all of the goals were scored when when watching after the fact, all the goals were scored in the same way that doesn’t present really as an opportunity in NWSL.

Yael Averbuch: Or, you know, the the players happen to have scored their goals or or gotten, you know, built up this data against much weaker competition within the league, but when playing against the top three or four clubs, that’s not when the the data was, you know, influenced. So I’d say that, certainly, strategically, we use it very early on in the process as well as in evaluating our own players. And it’s been it saved us a lot of time, I’d say, because it it just narrows what we need to watch. But but, absolutely, it has to be coupled with an understanding of why, and I think somebody brought this up earlier, but ask I’ve learned that asking the right questions is the whole key because, there is a reason why data shows the way it is, and understanding the why is so important.

Yael Averbuch: I have had, coaches consider it to be extremely positive if a player has run a lot, so they covered a lot of ground. Well, that they could be because they gave away the ball every single time or because they’re they were out of position or their teammates were out of position. It could be a really negative thing too. So I think understanding the why, you can look and kind of frame what what things are important to you, but then to attribute your own eye and your own instinctual understanding is really important.

Yael Averbuch: And and there’s also nuances that don’t get captured in data. And I think I think to properly use data, it has to be fit into the strategy in the right way.

Yael Averbuch: There there are players who, are extremely effective for the team because they take actions that then result in other players’ success, and that usually isn’t captured in data. So I think, I’m I’m pointing this out because I think if you can understand where there are the gaps and where you need to use your own eyes and your own knowledge, then the data can be strategically hugely important. So we’ve implemented it in a way where it helps us know what to look at and why we’re looking at that. And then from there, we need to make our own assessment of why the data may show what it’s showing.

John Portch: And if Bayer Leverkusen is a little bit further along the path I mean, Karl, you have some great players. Historically, you’ve had some great players and some excellent coaches as well, including the present day, of course. And that is down to you being able to identify being able to identify the best talents and bringing them into the club, but it also must be attractive to players and coaches as well to know that they’re coming into an environment where these conversations are happening, and that gives you potentially an advantage over your rivals in Germany.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: Yeah. You’re absolutely right.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: This is a plus for us because a player wants to improve.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: So Bayer Leverkusen is a club for some for top players, where they don’t stay. They want to go to a club like Real Madrid or to a club like Chelsea or whatever.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: And they know that with our strategy, we can make a player better.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: So, and we can show by data that he is better.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: It’s it’s easy if you have a striker and he scores twenty eight goals in a season. It’s he’s a successful player. But, it’s much more difficult if you have a defense player.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: You you you can just point out how many mistakes he made. But how he how he improved physically, how he improved in in, yeah, in running distance, in high speed running or whatever, in, in all of all those things, there you can you can show, over the years, over the time the player is with you improvement. And this is, is a plus. This is the when we hire players, it’s it’s a competition.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: If you hire a real good player, there are mostly other bigger teams around.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: And, some of the bigger teams are do have more money than we have, so we have to find arguments to come to to our club. And we are we are a club for young players which want to improve.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: And this like, we have now one of the best German players. Florian Wirtz is his name. He’s, together with, with Jamal Musiala.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: Definitely top two talents in the German Bundesliga.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: And he decides to stay longer with Bayer Leverkus because he has a chance to improve. He could have gone to Bayern Munich. He could have gone to Chelsea. He could have gone to Real Madrid, but he didn’t because he knows with our strategy, and this strategy is based on data, he can improve. And his outcome after some years will be much better. And this is a big argument for our for our recruitment, team to bring players to Bayer Leverkusen.

John Portch: It’s a wonderful story. And does it also reflect the fact that it’s not just improving the player in terms of their skill sets and preparing them for the next level or development in their career, but you’re also taking care of their health, well-being, injury prevention, rehab, and return to play as well if they did happen to be injured. Is that also a consideration of your strategy?

John Portch: Yes. Definitely.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: For a player, if he sees that there are less injuries with our our strategy to train, to play, and to prevent, it’s an argument as well for them to be with us.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: So if you are a young player and you’re often injured, you can’t improve, and risk that you never will reach your goals is your goals are high. So, yeah, there’s all our arguments to be with, like, to be with a club like Bayer Leverkusen.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: We have to be competitive with, as I told before, with real big, I would say, world clubs. And, so we we do have we we need to find arguments to be with us. Success is one.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: In in in terms of money, we if you go to Premier League, the money they earn is much higher. So, but for them, we are sometimes a step in between in their career to to to go to to a real big club afterwards.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: And our whole strategy, which where where data is a is an essential part of it, is is a big argument to convince them to come to us, to stay for a while with us, and to to leave us once, and we make money by selling players. If you buy a player for ten million and sell them afterwards for hundred fifty, you may, may, put some of this money in your stuff, in your in your, systems, and so on. So this is the kind a club like, Bayer Leverkusenborgs.

John Portch: I think that’s a very important point. And, Yael, listening to that there and reflecting on player health, well-being, injury prevention, rehab, and returns to play, how important is that in the women’s game as well? Because I’ve heard it said in the past that this is very much a consideration when women players are choosing a club or their next move that they are ultimately cared for because, obviously, there’s not as much money in the women’s game.

Yael Averbuch: Yeah. It’s hugely important, and I think, you know, echoing that, I would like us to get to the point where we have a more robust way of showing that we do a really good job at those things. We did use it, you know, last off season. I got some really good advice on recruitment and had to do with giving players information about themselves to show that we didn’t just look that they have a big name and they’re famous, but we really understand them as a player and why we’re recruiting them, as opposed to anyone else.

Yael Averbuch: And so we showed them some data about themselves, and we showed them some specifics, some areas we think we could help them get better. But the reality is, I forgot who mentioned this, is that if you need to train and you need to play to get better also, and, and and many players ask about it’s the first thing they wanna know is, where would I play on the field? How’s the football? And the second thing is, what about my body?

Yael Averbuch: How do I you know, the recovery what do we have access to with the recovery? How am I gonna stay healthy? How am I gonna make sure I’m on the field doing what I enjoy doing and doing what’s gonna pay pay the bills? So, certainly, it’s a huge part of what we’re doing, and I think we will continue to build up evidence as to the intentionality behind it.

Yael Averbuch: I think that’s what players really wanna see. They want to see that it’s being tracked, it’s being measured when they report things or when they take a test or do a jump test that it’s being recorded and tracked over time, which it you know, historically, I I I was at clubs and you do you give information every day, and there was no outcome from that. And I think it’s really important that players see when they are participating that we are giving them feedback and actually adjusting what we do to make it individualized for them. So we still, you know, a good amount of work to do to be really, really tough on that, but but it’s a huge object objective of ours, and it’s a very effective way to recruit and maintain players.

Yael Averbuch: It really matters.

Yael Averbuch: And it helps to build their value too. So even if they move on from the club to a next contract, elsewhere, I think they know and we know that they’ll be of more value if they’ve been healthy in playing.

John Portch: And, Stephen, you’ve heard what Yael and Karl have said there.

John Portch: And at Kitman Labs, you work with some of the most successful leagues and clubs in the world. And what is the role you see technology and advanced analytics playing and influencing their success? And in what areas is tech and advanced analytics best employed or having its greatest impact in your view?

Stephen Smith: Yeah. I think our job is to support the goals and outcomes that they decide for themselves. Right? I think that’s what gets us excited every day is is getting in and having those conversations, understanding what the biggest challenges that these, you know, these clubs and our partners are facing, and then helping them to develop strategies to answer those questions, to develop new methods, new systems, new processes to essentially tackle those.

Stephen Smith: And, you know, I think we’ve we’ve talked about probably all of the the the most important topics, in elite sport today, whether it’s, like, talent identification or or recruitment.

Stephen Smith: I think whether it’s, like, the development of talent and how do we make them better and how do we make them more valuable through through our clubs. How do we keep them on the field of performing well, and how do we keep them how do we keep them healthy and, like, increase their longevity, increase their value, increase their performance output.

Stephen Smith: And I think that that that’s really positive. Right? Like, listen to I think Yael mentioned that at the very beginning of the conversation. You know, when she was playing, data sometimes was being used in a negative fashion around sport.

Stephen Smith: I think it’s actually that’s changed completely whereby I think everybody, you know, bar none in the industry is trying to leverage data to improve the game, is trying to to leverage data to improve, you know, the playing conditions for athletes, the strategies for athletes, you know, the longevity of their careers, the value of, like, of what they do, the potential, you know, the potential value of how much they can extract from their career. I think we’re in a really, really healthy space within, like, data analytics and and and high performance today. I think we’re at probably the most exciting time we’ve ever been in this industry.

Stephen Smith: And I think we’re also seeing that some of these smaller, I suppose I don’t wanna call them projects or case studies, but, like, some of these initiatives that have been developed by some leading clubs, like the work that Doctor Dittmar has done, like, hearing that story. And I remember the output of that analysis where we looked at player availability and we looked at the relationship for for, for Bayer Leverkusen on the relationship between player availability and on field success. And we were we’re able to showcase that there’s a direct relationship between the amount of players you put on the field and your success on the field.

Stephen Smith: And then we’re able to look at the number of games that were needed to win a Bundesliga title and then be able to suggest if we get player availability above this point and we keep it there consistently, we know that, statistically, that is going to give us a really high likelihood of of winning the Bundesliga, and and being successful. And to see that come to fruition was like it it gave us an immense sense of pride in the work that we’re doing. I’m so proud of, like, the the the strategies that that Doctor Dittmar and his team put in place then because it’s easy to say, okay. Here’s the relationship.

Stephen Smith: The hard part is, okay. Well, how do we deploy strategies every day to get us there? And how do we have those tough conversations with the coaches to get them to understand this is what we’re seeing. This is how we need you to change your program and to get everybody to buy in to say, like, we know that if we get to this point, we are going to we’re going to give ourselves the best possibility for success.

Stephen Smith: And I think it’s those small way I I call that a small win. Those enormous wins, that, that, you know, amount to something really, really special. And I think when clubs start to see that and, you know, coaches start to see that and owners start to see that, that’s when people realize there’s gold here. And that’s when we need to start pushing this further and see, okay, what other initiatives can we do?

Stephen Smith: How do we get the entire organization bought into this? What’s the next most important aspect for us to be able to leverage data through? And that that’s not always just because you you do that, that doesn’t mean you’re going to win the bonus league every year. That doesn’t mean you’re going to win NWSL every year.

Stephen Smith: But are you going to be there thereabouts? Are you going to give yourselves the tools to get there? Absolute like, absolutely. And, I think what makes what makes what what what Doctor Dittmar and his his team did even even, even more important is that whilst, you know, you mentioned we hadn’t won the Bundesliga in in in many years, nobody had.

Stephen Smith: Bayern Munich had dominated the Bundesliga for, like, the longest period of time. And to see, like, what what Leverkusen did last year, they didn’t just, like, limp over the finish and win the win the league by a point. They completely dominated the entire league. And that, like, that’s incredibly special.

John Portch: Absolutely. A fantastic season, of course. And I wanted to move the conversation onto the NWSL’s rollout of its electronic medical record system through its partnership with Kitman Labs. This collaboration aims to enhance Performance Medicine across the league by implementing a centralized platform that integrates player medical data with performance metrics.

John Portch: Gotham FC was among the first clubs to adopt Kitman Labs’ Performance Medicine solution too, a solution that enables many of the things we’ve already spoken about, whether that’s integration of data, setting standards, or even real time data access. Yael, what was the club’s role in working with the league, and in this case, Kitman Labs, to make sure that the solution supported the needs of your club? And from your perspective, is it easier when this change is led by the league, or do you prefer this to be kept at, say, club level? I mean, there are clearly pros and cons, but perhaps you could give us your perspective.

Yael Averbuch: Sure. I mean, I will, I’ll start with the the second part of the question.

Yael Averbuch: I think, yeah, I think there’s pros and cons. I think, having having data that’s relevant and can be compared to other teams in league who are our competitors, data is is really helpful. We are still learning what’s normal, what’s good, what is what is something we need to change, what are the things giving us an advantage. And so to have information about what’s going on at other at our competitors is incredibly valuable. At the same time, you know, just listening to the story of what Leverkusen had done and what was behind it, I’m kinda like, oh, I wish no one else is working with Kitman Labs.

Yael Averbuch: Because I do think that the key is, you know, we’re always looking at what are the ways that we can do things differently. But I still think even everyone can have the same access to the same information and the way in which you look at it and the skill of the people looking at it and implementing it is really what will create the differentiation. So I think our challenge is to both use the huge benefit of having the data from our competitors too available, but also, to be using it in in a different, better, more special way that’s true to how we see things to give ourselves an advantage. So

Yael Averbuch: I will say this is where I’m I’m out of my depth because we have really great performance in medical, personnel who were very involved in the conversations to in terms of how we implement it. I’m sure asking a lot of questions, as well as understanding what other teams are doing and kind of both what is the norm and what’s considered best practices in the industry, but also what makes sense for us as a club and as an organization, which might be true for many other NWSL teams. I think a lot of us are at this a similar point in terms of how many people and the type of expertise of the people handling the data.

Yael Averbuch: A lot of teams don’t have data analytics departments or maybe even medical performance staff that are very proficient in using systems like that, using data. We’ve had some experienced people coming from MLS or coming from, you know, other sports, top top level who have maybe used other systems or even used Kitman previously. And so all of that, I think, when it when it comes to rolling it out and implementing it, definitely played a huge factor.

Yael Averbuch: But I think it’s I think it’s gonna come down to how we continue to use it, because definitely, yeah, pros and cons in terms of everyone in NWSL having access to the same thing. But I believe that, you know, even if that part of the playing field is even, we can find differentiation within it.

John Portch: And, Stephen, what are your reflections on the rollout of EMR and the NWSL?

Stephen Smith: Yeah. Listen. I think it’s it’s been hugely positive, and I think the the feedback that we’ve got from the clubs has been immense. I think it’s it’s really helped to create a standardized set of data.

Stephen Smith: I think the the role and the ambition of the NWSL is one of the things that excites me most about this. You know, I think everybody looked at the NWSL as an emerging league and, you know, one that’s trying to find its place in US sports. And when you talk to the executive staff at NWSL, that’s not how they see themselves. They know they’re here to stay.

Stephen Smith: They are really ambitious about the role that they want to play and how how important that can be, not just in in the US, but on the global, like, you know, football scene and and in in in the global, like, women’s sports scene. And I think to be involved in that and to help them, you know, many many people would say that for a a league that’s so young, that, you know, the focus should be on, hey. We need we need to focus on these things over here. We need to get get the best players here, etcetera.

Stephen Smith: And I think, yes, that’s happening. We need to get big media packages, etcetera. But to be able to go and have that dedicated focus to, you know what? We’re going to do the best that we can do for our players.

Stephen Smith: We are going to introduce world class player health and safety standards. We are going to develop, like, player welfare strategies that would rival any other league in the world. Like, that level of ambition that you’re seeing is is is really, really refreshing and I think is, like, is a testament to the intelligence and the quality of the people that are involved both at the league level and the club level.

Stephen Smith: So we’re we’re just really proud to be to be involved. And then I think it does, it also affords a huge opportunity for for, you know, clubs within the NWSL to then say, you know what? We are going to leverage this data. We are gonna leverage the understanding we can build across the league, but we’re gonna develop our own thing on top of that as well.

Stephen Smith: We’re going to, to Yael’s point, how do we think about that internally at Gotham? How do we think about that and say, this is how we develop competitive advantage? This is how we create something special that actually allows us to achieve more than everybody else? How do we upscale our people to to capitalize on the investment that the league has made and the unique opportunity that they’re within?

Stephen Smith: And and that, again, I think we’re really proud to be involved in in the NWSL and helping to elevate the standards. But I think we’re really excited about the work that we can do with the individual flows to create something really, really unique and special, and that that’s what gets us excited every day.

John Portch: And, Karl, I’ll go to you for what I would call the last question. There might be a follow-up. But do you anticipate a situation in the future where the Bundesliga takes a more active role in providing data and analytics for the teams within the league, or do you see it staying at club level in terms of research, player tracking, everything of that nature? What are your thoughts on that? And are you happy to maintain the current situation, or would you like to see it evolve?

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: No. I don’t I’m not happy to maintain the current situation. I would go further. I would what a big problem for us in international soccer soccer football is if when we is when we send players to the national teams. The data we get back from the national teams is poor. It’s not standardized.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: So I’m in a group where we talk about not just it’s just not just talking.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: So I’m I’m part of the medical and performance advisory board of the ECA, which is the European Club Association.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: It’s, like UEFA, but from the top clubs. And we definitely stated that it’s highly has highly importance to get data worldwide connected, worldwide standardized because the things we send players, we own as a club, we own the players, we pay the players and we get them back injured, we get them back with poor data, injury injury prevention. We we have per in by Leberkund, we have an almost perfect collection of of load data, but they leave for for a national break international break and they are away for for two weeks and what we get is mostly very, very poor. We don’t know nothing about load. We don’t we know nothing about, about what happened to them, their complaints. We and they can sometimes, they come back on Tuesday evening on Thursday evening and the next match is on Saturday.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: So there is no no time or very limited time. So, yes, I really would love if he could manage it to have a standardized system over the whole league. And I go on over the whole football world. This would be would be a a great, great effort and this is a plan we have to work to work on. And, in in in our group, in the ECA, we think about it and I’m one who says that this would have high importance to roll it out all over.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: And because we already have it, for me, Kitmann would be the perfect system because with Kitman, I know how to work with it. All our data is already in the Kitman world. So, why not going on on the street with with Kitman? Would be the easiest for me.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: So, yeah. Just what I wanted to what I wanted to say before, to sing Yael said, just at what data for us is very, very important because when I look back for my more than twenty years, football training changed totally. So twenty years ago, we had a coach. We had a goals key goalkeeper coach, and we had a performance coach.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: That’s that was it. We had three coaches, and they did something together. But and they’re the training we did was so called football training. Now sixty percent of the training is individual.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: So, we we left forty percent as football training performed by the football coach, and the rest is from the medical and performance department.

Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar: And this is just possible if you have enough data to to to work a personal training, which is individual. It’s just just possible if you have data for it. And, so this, was a a high importance I wanted to mention as well. Okay. Good. I’m done.

John Portch: Perfect. I think that’s a great place to bring the conversation to a close. Thank you all so much for joining the show today.

Stephen Smith: Thanks, John.

John Portch: And thank you. Sorry. Thank you.

John Portch: Thanks everyone.

John Portch: And thank you, listener, for being with us right until the end of this Kitman Labs.