A new football management app has helped revolutionise one of the most renowned football academy's in the world, Sporting CP.
FootballISM, created in partnership with AGAP2IT, is an all-encompassing piece of software that helps coach/s organise and structure their football department. The application has the ability to cover a range of processes including scouting and recruitment, training evaluation and competition, facilities, equipment, contracts and medical component.
The app has been adopted by Sporting youth director, Aurelio Pereira, who helped cultivate the talents of Cristiano Ronaldo, Luis Figo and Nani, amongst dozens of others.
According to the International Center for Sports Studies, Sporting ranks as a more productive academy than those at Barcelona, Real Madrid and Manchester United.
But despite the academy's prestigious status, Pereira has chosen to take Sporting into the future by going into partnership with FootballISM.
"People involved in youth coaching have to listen and learn and that is what we want. The world is about learning, our lives are about learning. It would be impossible to be here and not learn something", said Pereira at the Future of Football International Congress in April.
In an exclusive interview with Tribalfootball, AGAP2IT director Filipe Esteves discusses the new app that has helped transform one of the world's best academy's.
Tell us a little about FootballISM and your partnership with Sporting CP. How was the partnership talks initiated?
The partnership started almost 4 years ago. First because of a vision that SCP had to improve their information systems, but a very crude idea comparing to ISM today.
First they wanted only a software to help them on their youth football training program, with the years it grew to every aspect of youth football and also professional football including areas such as medical, legal, scouting, which means today we cover every department of a big professional club.
How important has president Bruno de Carvalho to the partnership?
The project almost ended before Bruno Carvalho became president, when he came to SCP he encountered a lot of problems inside the club and for himself we picked up the project again and he was the first to really understand the need of a system to help to manage the club.
Getting the endorsement of Aurelio Pereira must have been a big boost. Did you get any push back/resistance from Sporting CP during the development process?
It was a difficult task sitting down with every department and get them to tell us in details every aspect of their work. It took almost 2 years until the analysis was complete. Especially in youth scouting, the department managed by Aurelio Pereira, working with him was a pleasure. What most people don't understand, even inside the world of football don't understand, is how complex youth scouting is in SCP. Aurelio Pereira started the department almost 40 years ago and theres a lot of trade "secrets" in getting the best young players to your club.
In terms of scouting, is there a danger of relying too much on statistics? Has FootballISM managed to include the experience/know-how of someone like Aurelio Pereira into your system?
The system helps the scouts, it doesn't do the evaluation for them, the statistics are there to sustain the scouts evaluation. The experience of Aurelio Pereira gave us the knowledge to produce easy to use apps for the scouts to take to the games and with just a few seconds send the feedback to the central department. His experience also gave us the chance to improve on how they work on thousands of scouting process's at the same time, tasks previously done by hand. Our intend with ISM is to give the information back to the club in such a way that helps them in decision making.
Can you tell us some of the coaches/directors at Sporting who have offered their feedback on the system? How is the partnership now that it is fully integrated?
Almost every head coach in youth football gave their feedback to put inside the system, including the technical director. We also had feedback from the professional teams. Besides the technical teams, all the others departments including the facilities manager, suppliers, meals, medical, psychologist, legal, top management of the club also. The partnership I would say is 95% complete.
Tell us a little how FootballISM brings together all the scouting information of players that Sporting CP are watching.
Imagine centralising information from a department where almost 200 scouts work, not counting support and decision staff. Managing the tasks for all those people, their weekly activity plan, hundreds of reports each week, thousands of active scouting processes, each week there is an action plan for each athlete scouted for the next game. This gives you an idea on how helpful ISM can be. In addition to the FootballISM main system we provide the clubs with the mobile apps which work fully integrated in the main system meaning that wherever the scouts there are in real-time connected to the club and can send the reports in a matter of second, and also the club can communicate back to the through the app.
Do you think FootballISM would've identified a player like Bebe given his difficult background? How so?
The clubs can use FootballISM to identify the tendencies of the players, in scouting they can go only to a certain point, because they don't work every day with the player, they don't know his social, academic behaviour. If the player is inside the academy they can track all of the above and they can see if a certain player evolves, if a certain player can really improve from being a potential good youth player to a professional one. There's specific aspects of the player they study since they are 13 years old, meaning that certain deviant behaviours most of the time, come up in a young age. So answering your question, yes I believe it helps the club to understand if the player has the right potential or not, please keep in mind that these are human beings and it's not a exact science.
How have the parents and families of players at Sporting taken to the information offered by FootballISM?
The parents and families get the information from ISM, but don't know the source or even how it all comes together.
Can you tell us some of the clubs who are in talks about introducing the FootballISM technology to their system? What sort of interest is there beyond Portugal?
The interest most of it comes from outside of Portugal, I can tell you that clubs from France, England, Spain in the top 5 championship are interested. We also have been in contact with several clubs in South America. The software has only been public for 3 months and we have been really running from one country to the other. There's still a lot of countries he haven't had the time to go to.
Video courtesy of agap2 IT
