By John Portch

Simone Biles, Michael Phelps, Kobe Bryant and Muhammad Ali are just some examples of neurodivergent athletes who have achieved supreme success.

Biles and Phelps have both been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder [ADHD]; Bryant and Ali were both dyslexic.

These neurological conditions did not prevent them realising their sporting ambitions, although in the case of athletes with ADHD, the path can be treacherous.

“Athletes with ADHD are facing an oversized set of obstacles,” said Dr David Conant-Norville, a psychiatrist who has worked with the PGA Tour and NFLPA.

“Some coaches still scoff at the disorder, mistaking its real, medical symptoms for bad behaviour, poor parenting or an athlete ‘just not trying hard enough’ and dismissing the kid as ‘uncoachable’,” he told ESPN in 2016.

It can be just as difficult for young athletes with autism spectrum disorder [ASD]. Former NBA small forward Tony Snell was diagnosed with ASD in 2023 at the age of 31. Snell claimed the relative lateness of his diagnosis as the reason he was able to enjoy nine seasons in the league.

“I don’t think I’d have been in the NBA if I was diagnosed with autism because back then they’d probably put a limit or cap on my abilities,” he told NBC’s Today in 2023.

One can ask how much progress has truly been made in the last two decades. This question formed a key part of the agenda at Leaders Meet: Teaching & Coaching, which took place at the renowned Millfield School in Somerset, in April 2024.

“A lot of coaches might not have had any training or experience with neurodivergent individuals, which can lead to uncertainty,” said Pippa Counsell, a speech, language & communication therapist working for Millfield.

Counsell was on hand with some useful tips for coaches who perhaps sense that an athlete is out of sync with their peers.

What is ‘neurodivergence’?

In neurodivergent people, the brain functions, learns, and processes information in ways that differ from what is typically considered ‘neurotypical’.

Neurodivergence encompasses a range of neurological conditions and differences, including:

• Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): Marked by persistent patterns of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity.
• Autism spectrum disorder (ASD): Characterised by differences in social interaction, communication, and repetitive behaviours.
• Dyslexia: A learning difference that affects reading, spelling, and writing abilities.
• Dyspraxia: A condition affecting physical coordination and motor skills.
• Dyscalculia: A learning difference that impacts the ability to understand numbers and mathematical concepts.
• Tourette syndrome: A condition involving repetitive movements or unwanted sounds (tics) that cannot be easily controlled.

Counsell stressed that while it is important to build trusting relationships with athletes, it is also critical to not attempt to “re-wire” an athlete.

“We won’t be able to change that in the window that we’ve got with them,” she said. “So what we’ve got to do is identify the traits that we think are the ones we need to make the most difference to and then dovetail with their wiring.”

With this in mind, she offered tips on how coaches can better manage the issues their neurodivergent athletes may face.

Attention and listening issues

• Minimise distractions: Ensure the training area is quiet and free from unnecessary visual distractions. “External stimuli would be something like your shoelace isn’t tied exactly the same on both your shoes – some people focus in on these precise, pedantic details.”
• Break down instructions: Avoid overwhelming the individual with too much information at once. “Keep your sentences really short. Only say what you need to say.”
• Use visual aids: Diagrams, charts or written instructions help to reinforce verbal communication.

Language processing issues

• Avoid abstract concepts, metaphors and idioms: They can confuse. “Keep to concrete vocabulary when you’re working with people who you think might have a comprehension difficulty.”
• Repeat and (don’t) rephrase: “If you repeat something, repeat it using exactly the same words that you used before; and if that doesn’t work, think about getting someone else to try to explain it.”
• Allow extra processing time: Pause between instructions to allow the athlete to absorb and understand.

Expressive language issues

• Encourage written communication: Use pens and paper or whiteboards to help individuals express their thoughts and ideas.
• Ask questions to help individuals structure their thoughts and narratives: Focus on the basics of ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘where’, ‘when’, and ‘why’. “You have to ask loads of questions to clarify what they’re trying to tell you.”
• Create a calm environment: Have conversations in quiet settings to reduce stress.

Social communication issues

• Monitor non-verbal cues: Be aware of body language and facial expressions; adjust your approach accordingly.
• Teach conversation skills: Provide explicit instruction on turn-taking, starting conversations, and maintaining eye contact.
• Stick to the ‘script’: “Sometimes you get athletes who communicate with a kind of script. And you think ‘surely we had this conversation the last time I spoke to this person?’ and you probably would have done because, for a lot of athletes with social communication impairments, they will have a bit of safe ground that they can use repeatedly.”

Emotional regulation issues

• Predict and de-escalate: Be proactive in predicting potential triggers and de-escalating situations before they become overwhelming.
• Provide psychological security: Ensure individuals feel safe and supported. This can involve explaining actions and offering apologies if misunderstandings occur.
• Know someone’s triggers: Then work to avoid or mitigate them. Gather insights from parents, teachers, and other support staff.

What to read next

‘The Best Influencers Listen Carefully, Ask the Right Questions, and Communicate a Compelling Vision’

By Luke Whitworth

Stephen Torpey, the Academy Director at Premier League Brentford, was damning in his verdict on the English football academy system’s ability to give young players a happy, fulfilling experience.

“There are 18,400 players on average in the system,” said Torpey, when speaking at Leaders Meet: The Talent Journey in April. “To say that every single one of them is ready, can handle this environment, and is going to have a great time whilst in it, I would question that.”

Effective pathway transitions were a major theme of the day’s discussions and leant themselves neatly to a virtual roundtable the following week when practitioners from across the globe were invited to share insights into the development experiences they believe have proven most effective in helping young athletes to make the transition from the junior ranks into senior competition.

The conversation alighted upon six important elements.

1. Relevant competition exposure

The fact that competition exposure was up first reinforced how crucial experience is for young athletes, particularly the act of exposing them to different types of adversity and building their mental resilience through that process.

Competition experience represents an obvious focus, with one environment in the world of swimming identifying a small gap in their programme for 19-23-year-olds – those that fell between the top end of the pathway and the senior team. They plug this gap by taking this cohort overseas to compete in competition-style scenarios. They also simulated experiences they might encounter during senior competitions, from the use of coaching language and setting out behavioural expectations to the potentially unusual timing of meetings during competitions. The impact has been positive.

2. Exposure to senior environments

This is closely linked to competition exposure and includes both the opportunity to experience senior environments and train with more mature athletes and senior, high-performing coaches. A number of participants mentioned ‘taster sessions’ as a simple but effective way to improve the transition experience by offering a sample of life within the inner sanctum. Moreover, it is helpful for senior coaches to be able to benchmark future talent in a way that informs selection.

These practices hint at the importance of connection between senior and development environments and better integration of the people operating in these environments. If true alignment is to be achieved in this area, senior coaches must buy into the idea that providing exposure and opportunities is a critical element of talent development.

3. ‘Buddy’ systems

In building upon the idea of increased exposure to senior environments, the table talked about being creative and resourceful in using more experienced athletes to aid transitions. One participant revealed that rehabbing senior athletes are encouraged to mentor their team’s academy players, which facilitates consistent messaging across the board while also equipping those senior players with new skills. It called to mind proximal role modelling, which has long been discussed within the walls of the Leaders Performance Institute.

Whatever your approach to pairing senior and underage players, the table agreed that it must be consistent and cannot be just a reactive exercise.

4. Individual development plans

These are for athletes and coaches alike, as one participant said of their environment. A good IDP caters to individual needs and creates reflection moments that aid transition experiences.

One attendee from an Olympic sport spoke of their team’s sessions promoting athlete identity and a better understanding and awareness of the support systems available to them. It causes athletes to ask themselves: who are the people who can support me in this phase of my transition?

Psychological profiling is a natural corollary. A participant from a club in English football is endeavouring to better understand the psychological makeup of young talent. They want to know how they learn and what environments would encourage better growth. They also alighted upon the idea of building stronger inner resilience, which is too often overlooked in the face of tactical and technical development. To aid them in this mission, the club seeks to help its support staff develop greater emotional intelligence as their young players manage the highs and lows of their development.

5. Upskilling your coaches

The table underlined the importance of investing in coach development as a key influence on transition experiences for athletes. One element of this is ensuring coaches are equipped to recognise and understand different transitions as they occur in different contexts and, therefore, deal with them more effectively.

One environment within the Olympic system explained how their decentralised programme has witnessed new performance records at junior level due in part to their consistent approach to coach development. Their heightened emphasis on coach support and development extends not only to their current athletes but those next on the pathway.

Also, coach-to-coach exchanges enable individuals to discuss both common transitions and those lesser-considered transitions that are nevertheless challenging, such as injuries.

6. Dedicated resource

It is essential to have dedicated resource to managing athlete transitions, whether an athlete is progressing to a senior squad or leaving the sport entirely. One attendee described their specific remit for pathway transitions, which enables them to identify gaps and then create the strategies or skillsets to plug those gaps. It is important that athletes are supported emotionally, technically and tactically.

This goes for the learning and development of coaches too, with the consensus being that they can take advantage of the expertise in their high performance ranks whether that’s sports science, nutrition, skill acquisition or biomechanics. Their learning and development excels when they cede some control to their support staff.

One attendee told the tale of an experienced Olympic coach who worked with a skill acquisition specialist to ask if there was a better way to help athletes transition from reaching finals to topping the podium. In other words, how can elite training design benefit from scientific enquiry?

Final considerations

Better onboarding

Too often, the induction process for young athletes is reduced to a tick-box exercise. Mindful of this, one environment talked about adapting their induction language and approach. Beyond induction, they are providing youngsters with a longer period of onboarding, which could be months, to help create the time and space for them to ask more questions and get to know the environment better. It prompted another at the table to ponder how we might check the success of our onboarding strategies. For example, one can test for understanding when it comes to education processes.

Continuous refinement

The continuous interrogation of what went well and what didn’t will help to refine processes of transition. One attendee stated that it’s important to critically reflect and then adapt how we support young athletes through the transition phase from underage to senior level.

What to read next

The Winning Formula for the Future of Performance Sport

An article brought to you by

By John Portch

Talent identification is a small part of a much bigger puzzle.

“It is only a really small part,” said Dr Alex Roberts. “We need to make sure we’re putting those strong development environments around athletes because it doesn’t matter if we pick 100 per cent of the right athletes if we’re not putting them in the right environment.”

Roberts, the Talent Identification & Development Lead at the Queensland Academy of Sport [QAS], is speaking at the third and final session of ‘The Future of Performance Sport’, a three-part Virtual Roundtable series brought to you by the Leaders Performance Institute and Exercise & Sports Science Australia.  The focus for the concluding conversation was talent identification, development and management.

She was joined on the virtual stage by Darren Shand, the former Manager of the New Zealand All Blacks, who offered perspectives from the senior end.

Firstly, Roberts outlined talent identification and development at QAS.

QAS offers opportunities, but not guarantees

Above all else, you must provide young athletes with a good experience, which QAS seeks to do through its YouFor2032 talent identification programme. Their goal is to discover and develop athletes with the potential to achieve medal success at the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Brisbane. At the time of writing, approximately 6,000 young Queenslanders have entered the programme.

“We can’t guarantee that athletes are going to succeed,” said Roberts, “but we want to make sure that they’ve got every opportunity to find the sport that they could be successful in, and that they have the appropriate education and development that will allow them to succeed.”

They have adopted the ‘principle of sports orientation’

Youngsters’ skills will be assessed to enable placement in a sport they may not have tried. “We see if their skills, their backgrounds, their traits, might fit a different sport,” said Roberts. Once assigned to a sport, the athlete will enter a three-month confirmation phase where they will learn the fundamental skills and get to know their coaches.

The physical is the starting point

Without the right physical characteristics mindset counts for little. “If you’re 160cm [5′ 2″] tall, you’re probably not going to be a rower, no matter how badly you want it,” said Roberts. “We match physical traits to where people are genetically predisposed to have more success.”

QAS also looks for elite behaviours

During the three-month confirmation phase, QAS will look for evidence of the behavioural patterns that denote elite performers (“We look at things like: do they show up on time? Do they put the effort into their warm up and cool down? Do they bring a water bottle?”). QAS does not, however, undertake formal psychological profiling at any stage. “As far as we know, the evidence isn’t there to support specific psychological profiles for long-term success in sport, particularly within the age groups we’re working with.”

Social support underpins the QAS approach

Social support is particularly important when athletes progress to the more intense 12-month development phase. It is a critical element of balancing challenge and support. Roberts said: “When we do our athlete development camps, we bring all of the athletes from all the sports in at once, so they can get cross-sport friendships. They can see what other sports look like. They can see that it’s not just them that are going through this. They’ve got that in-built support network that they can lean on.”

Additionally, “if we’re picking an athlete in Cairns for beach volleyball, we will take a few athletes to make sure that there’s a training squad up there; that they’ve got some other friends that are learning the same sport, that are progressing through the same system.”

The role of sports scientists

The sports scientists of QAS serve as educators, not only of coaches on state or national programmes, but further down to the grassroots. For young athletes it is, as Roberts said, about “early education; not waiting until they are moving through the system”. As for coaches, “they are the ones who are face to face with these athletes at every stage of their development.” Therefore she and her colleagues will work with coaches at different levels of the pathway and make sure that “they have that clear and consistent messaging, making sure that they understand what it looks like for the athletes, making sure that they understand the value of athlete wellbeing.”

The YouFor2032 app

As Roberts explained, the YouFor2032 app is helping QAS to find talent across the state of Queensland. Youngsters can download the app and test themselves in a home setting, with in-built AI enabling them to do it alone. Roberts said: “You don’t need an expert to hold the phone and get the angles right. You don’t need someone to sit down and analyse the joint movements. It does all of that for us.” Results are sent to QAS, who then begin the initial screening.

The app means fewer missed athletes during regional visits. “If you miss out, it used to mean you had to wait until next year,” added Roberts. “The app is going to remove a lot of those barriers for people.”

It was then Shand’s turn to provide an insight into the All Blacks’ double Rugby World Cup-winning environment, of which he was part for 18 years.

The All Blacks detest the term ‘fit’

The All Blacks’ maxim ‘you join us, we don’t join you’ is as true today as it has ever been. Yes, the team prizes hard work, self-driven individuals, and a willingness to learn – these help to set the standards that all players must meet – but there is also room for individuality.

“One of the things that annoys me in environments is when people say ‘we just want to get people that fit in’. I detest that,” said Shand. “I’m not after fit. I want people that are going to add.” He believes that diversity of personality and the very idea of complex individuals are something to be embraced.

“Saying you want someone to fit is a cop-out. You’re not really aiming high enough. You’re certainly not aiming at the world-class level,” he continued. “I reflect back on some of the players that we had whose high end was unbelievable, but their bottom end was a real nightmare, but they just added so much richness to the guys that perhaps sat in the middle. Across team sports, particularly that richness and what they can offer in terms of growth, outweighs what can happen at the bottom end.”

They create a home on the road

The All Blacks spent much of their time on tour, including at four overseas Rugby World Cups during Shand’s tenure. They quickly realised the performance benefit to making camps in France, Britain or Japan feel as much like home as possible, which meant including families at opportune moments. The penny dropped for Shand at a training session on the eve of a World Cup quarter-final in Cardiff.

“We finished the session and all the kids ran out into the field, and I just looked at it, and I just saw something I hadn’t really noticed before: the connection and the energy. I said to myself: ‘this is why they play’.”

Non-playing All Blacks are heavily involved

The All Blacks value their non-playing squad members and, once selection decisions have been clearly and respectfully explained, ensure their continued involvement throughout a game week.

“It’s an opportunity for them to coach,” said Shand. “So there might be three of them playing for the same position, but only two play, with the third becoming a coach. We often get our greatest learnings when we coach. It’s an opportunity to share the leadership without the pressure; how can I lead some of the things off field to take the pressure off those preparing to go on field?

“It’s also an opportunity to be the opposition and to learn and help our guys prepare because, at the end of the day, you’re never going to outperform your preparation. So the preparation has to be your best.”

In the future

Athletes will…

Enjoy longer careers. “It’s great to see that your age is not as much of a barrier anymore, that we’re not burning athletes out as early. They’re not getting injured and having to retire early,” said Roberts.

Not specialise as early. “In most of our sports we’re starting to see athletes have that much longer trajectory, which means we can wait to specialise.”

Take further ownership of their career trajectory, striking a balance between individual and team goals. Practitioners must “keep bringing the frame back to what do we need on Saturday and how do we best embrace that,” said Shand.

Practitioners will need to…

Further adapt to athletes’ needs. “I see it more in the work I’m doing now with sports, that real drive for life beyond sport, particularly as influencers,” said Shand. “It’s just trying to find the right marriage and the right method for letting people do that, but also realising that when they come back inside the walls and they fit with the behaviours and non-negotiables that we want.”

What to read next

The Winning Formula for the Future of Performance Sport

Interview by John Portch

“I think football clubs are able to recruit better talent in the market than they were before.”

So says Rodrigo Picchioni, the Head of Football Analytics at Clube Atlético Mineiro in Brazil.

He explains his observation to the Leaders Performance Institute. “Firstly, we are able to compete with financial companies for good analytics personnel,” he says. “The second thing is that we are shifting to more cross-functional integrated approaches within clubs.

“Traditionally, we have always been isolated departments. You had your analysis department, scouting, coaching, sports science – and while these still exist – it’s more and more common to see the integrated approaches of a central analysis department that encompasses numerous different practices in a single space.” That space is often represented by a research department of the type made famous by Premier League champions Manchester City, as well as the likes of Liverpool, Brighton and Brentford.

Numerous clubs across the globe have followed suit in the past decade or so.

Here, Picchioni, in his own words, ponders how the role of the analyst is evolving and how coaches and other staff may best use their analysis and research departments to their advantage.

There is a growing demand for hybrid practitioners… that is professionals who can make the translation between data and practice. That means they can bridge the traditional with novel practices. This also means we are starting to see domain experts with data literacy, whether that be in boardrooms or in coaching staff.

When owners, board members and executives are more comfortable receiving inputs from data departments, it enables analysts to step away from being just a product requested towards more proactive initiatives.

I increasingly act as a project manager… it is not only about research and development but also about process optimisation and automation. This goes back to what I said before about the analytics department as a group within the club.

The art of communicating insights is a constant exercise and there are different approaches. One example is the limitation approach where we force ourselves to go to the core of what’s really important and can’t be missed. We always want to make sure that what the coach tells us is key for them is the first thing they see in every report.

If you can demonstrate operational value, then automate, that will free up your time for research… at Atlético Mineiro, we have four key products that need to be running smoothly: player identification, player analysis, match analysis and team analysis. They are repeatable in terms of usability by coaches and scouts each week.

The next logical thing is to automate them because, by automating them, we are generating time for the department to tackle long research projects – and these longer projects will only make sense if they aid decision-making and improve the core products. They can take longer to generate an output and that’s fine because the day-to-day running is automated.

Analysts should be teachers… it is our task to improve the data literacy of our colleagues, to be patient in our explanations, so that we are taking part in their data education. Then their approach is likely be more scientific.

In the past, I’ve been against the practice of changing the language for the user because it leaves room for misinterpretation of the evidence that you are providing. However, I do think there is space for adapting the language as long as you make sure in a report or visualisation what is ‘inside’ this new term that you’ve created.

As for the future… it is likely that most clubs now have at least one analytics-dedicated staff member.

Once the success stories start to become more and more common, it’s almost like you’re leaving money on the table if you’re not investing in research and analytics.

What to read next

Rodrigo Picchioni also features in…

Performance Special Report – High Performance Unpacked

An article brought to you in collaboration with

By Luke Whitworth

Half of the practitioners at elite sports organisations believe there is limited integration between their data analysis and coaching teams.

That is according to a straw poll of attendees at a recent Virtual Roundtable hosted by the British Association of Sport & Exercise Sciences [BASES] and the Leaders Performance Institute.

The perception is worse when it comes to analysis and recruitment, with over 60 per cent of attendees suggesting that their analytics and recruitment teams do not work closely at all.

Yet 63 per cent also believe that improved data and computer literacy across their staffs would directly impact performance.

The sense that there is room for improvement gave the session its title: ‘Mobilising Performance Analysis in Practice’. It was the second in our three-part collaboration with BASES called Advances in Performance Analysis and centred around two case studies.

The first was delivered by Julia Wells, the Head of Performance Analysis at the UK Sports Institute [UKSI], and the second by Mat Pearson, the Head of Performance Insights & Data Strategy at English Premier League side Wolverhampton Wanderers.

Five areas where data literacy can improve performance

Before Wells and Pearson delivered their insights, attendees were set a further task: ‘as a consequence of improving data or computer literacy, describe what you would see as being the most significant impact on performance’.

The responses were varied but five stood out:

1. Improved efficiency: save time and, with that time-saving ability, you have more space to explore and analyse the insights to then act upon them. Similarly, greater efficiency means less education on metrics and processes for those who don’t have expertise in the area. Finally, there will be fewer mistakes.
2. Better accuracy: this leads to better decisions, thus allowing one to be more evidence-based in wider decision-making.
3. Observing trends over time: if done well, this leads to more engagement from coaches and athletes in the process and allows for data trends to be seen over a longer period of time.
4. More evidence-based decisions: an ability to create general reports at user level with an ability to drill down and ask more specific and sophisticated questions of data.
5. Easier benchmarking: there is room for more programme guidance and testing if things are working. It leads to more objective-based player assessments rather than just the subjective.

How the UKSI are mobilising performance analysis work-ons in meeting common challenges in data analysis

The first session highlighted the four biggest challenges facing people who use data analysis in sport. To kick off her presentation in the second, Wells explained how the UKSI is trying to tackle those four challenges (plus another).

Challenge 1: integration

Go back to basics. That’s the approach of the UKSI, who have placed an emphasis skill development, support structures and a clear data strategy.

It goes like this: the relevant staff members are upskilled in areas such as collecting the right data, using the correct formats in the right places before the interrogation and analysis even begins. This is then supported by a clear data strategy geared towards performance planning. For example, roles such as the data & insight lead and the performance data lead are embedded within the organisation to better help those leading programmes with the direction and the integration of their data. Thus, the strategy can come to the fore and everyone can better understand what needs collating and why within the team.

Challenge 2: data collation

Wells described how easy it can be to stay on the “hamster wheel” of collecting data without taking the time to critically reflect and pause. Can you, for example, call upon efficient processes for collecting data and wade through the myriad datasets potentially available? She recommended asking “quality questions”: why are we creating the data, what is its purpose, what decisions is it informing, particularly in the coaching process? Teams should do this periodically and continue to plan, do and review. Wells also encouraged engaging in conversations with key leaders in the environment to discuss what to start, continue and stop. It’s important to intentionally carve out those opportunities as part of your performance planning.

Challenge 3: communicating data insights

Wells stressed the critical nature of human engagement in the process and regards communication is a highly technical skill, despite the views of those who might see it as a ‘soft’ skill.

She shared that the different performance departments within the UKSI work closely with the psychology team to help elevate understanding of self and others. Wells said, if we can better understand the people we work with, it will support how people can get the best out of each other.  As part of this process, they’ve tapped into better understanding one another’s preferences in order to be more impactful in how they support each other.

Challenge 4: buy-in

It is not uncommon for senior stakeholders to not perceive the value of the work being done. This makes it incumbent on analysts to critically assess their impact and share the meaningfulness of their work. “It’s our job, and it’s our role to be critically analysing why and presenting that back,” as Wells said.

On that note, alignment to the sport’s strategy helps to provide a clearer connection. If this alignment and connection isn’t there, you’ll naturally get disconnection so it will be more challenging to get the buy-in.

In addition, relationships are just as critical when generating buy-in. Wells advocated inviting leaders and key stakeholders into your world and shadowing them. When they immerse themselves in better understanding the process you’ll find that it can quickly lead to them becoming a voice for you in wider conversations.

Challenge 5: data illiteracy

Too often, practitioners can suffer in silence when looking for solutions. In the latest Olympic and Paralympic cycles, Wells and her colleagues are seeking to increase data literacy across the board. They have introduced an internal online data community that provides access to resources, promotes connection, and leads to the sharing of good practice.

Wells’ team also put together a ‘Data Leadership Programme’ which is focused on pulling together the data leaders in the various sports with whom the UKSI work to look at opportunities, challenges and future direction. Courses, with titles including ‘Data Camp’, ‘Project Automate’ and ‘Code School’, were created to improve skills and processes for coaches and practitioners to help them be more efficient. In her mind, this has been crucial to enable people to be upskilled; and all support staff should be able to ask a good question and have the data skills to answer them.

How data analysis is supporting coaching and recruitment at Wolves

Pearson explained that he and his colleagues at Wolves are trying to align the club to ensure there is consistent evidence available and better identification of the trends impacting decision making from a data point of view.

He focused on two key areas: coaching and recruitment.

1. The integration of data analysis with the coaching process

In the environment, the analysts are part of the multidisciplinary team. They are very much now voices in the room and, with it being a specialised discipline, all analysts must have an impact on decision making.

To that end, Pearson’s team have moved away from leaving the coaches to find the solutions themselves. Instead, analysts are encouraged to go and find solutions, present them to the coach, and then have good conversations to better find the optimal outcome.

Part of the challenge we can face, said Pearson, in particular with performance analysis at first-team level in professional football, is that many environments can be quite coach-led, which is in keeping with the nature of short tenures. The coaches will lean into their viewpoint as a way to exert their control. Therefore, education is important and, in particular, how you communicate with them to ensure the message lands. That said, Pearson observed that coaches in modern day football are more attuned to data and performance analysis and are much more data literate and comfortable with technology.

A key learning when integrating performance analysis and data work with coaching is to make insights as contextual as possible. If you provide insights to a coach that are out of context, you’ll lose them straight away.

2. How data can support the game model, recruitment and selection

Pearson told attendees that some of the biggest strides in performance analysis and the wider data team have been in the field of game modelling, recruitment and selection decisions, with the obvious caveat that subjective input is still valued immensely.

The team have worked to create objective measures against the game model. In better understanding this, it has provided an additional layer of information related to individual player requirements for the game model. These insights are helping to inform both selection for matchday but also the recruitment of new talent. When thinking about the recruitment process in particular, Pearson said this process has helped to educate scouts and other recruitment personnel in the attributes for which they should be looking.

Visuals have played a key role in this process too, particularly in being able to show what it looks like to play in this particular style that the coach or manager wants. They’ve worked to make the playing style more objective.

A Data & Innovation article brought to you by

By Joe Lemire

Major League Soccer is undertaking an ambitious, tech-aided endeavor to find overlooked talent, particularly in North America, through a new partnership with ai.io, the makers of mobile phone scouting app aiScout. All MLS first team clubs, as well as MLS Next Pro and MLS Next teams, will have access to the platform to scout players who can upload videos and metrics to the app for free.

“That’s why we think this technology is so powerful because all you need is this [smartphone],” MLS SVP Emerging Ventures Chris Schlosser said, “and suddenly, you can be scouted anywhere at zero cost. You can go do drills in your backyard or your driveway or local park, and that would allow you to get on MLS’s radar.”

MLS and ai.io will begin collecting data this fall to create appropriate benchmarks for evaluating players at various levels before all players gain access to aiScout in January 2024. The aiScout app uses Intel’s 3D Athlete Tracking computer vision technology and assess users’ physical and technical skills. Premier League clubs Chelsea and Burnley, which recently clinched a return to the top tier next season, are both R&D partners.

Fred Lipka, the Technical Director at MLS Next, helped champion the use of technology to eliminate the barriers of cost and geography from talent identification.

“Players’ pathways, as they journey through youth sport, is not necessarily soccer first,” Richard Felton-Thomas, aiScout’s COO and Director of Sport Science, said of the US. “And they didn’t just want to be an organization that’s picking up talent because they haven’t made it somewhere else. They want it to be at the forefront of talent identification, and he very early saw that the way to do this is to be able to make sure we can look at everybody in the country simultaneously and fairly.”

The founding story of ai.io originates from the experience of Founder Darren Peries and his son who, after being released from Tottenham’s academy, had no digital CV — data or video — to share with scouts of other clubs. And that was the case for a promising player who had been competing under the purview of a top-flight club. Many multiples more youth had even less access to the typical sporting infrastructure.

Perhaps the best case study of aiScout’s efficacy is its use by another early client, the Reliance Foundation Young Champs, a leading academy in India. During the pandemic when its scouts were unable to travel, RFYC used aiScout to evaluate 12-year-old players. AiScout was used to whittle down the number of candidates for a tryout — and led to the academy inviting four players from rural areas who weren’t even playing organized soccer at the time and thus never would have been on the radar.

“The nature of talent development can be a bit random,” Ben Smith, formerly Chelsea Football Club’s Head of Research and Innovation, told SBJ last summer before joining BreakAway Data full-time. “So if we can have a technology to work at scale across vast areas, then that our scope and our reach is potentially very substantial.”

MLS clubs will be able to search for talent globally, but the primary goal is to consider continental talent, given some of the regulations around homegrown players and international visas.

The aiScout app was part of FIFA’s innovation program and underwent validation testing at Loughborough University, London and Kingston University. A revamped version of the app was released last year to include more gamification and more content geared toward player development, as opposed to just evaluation.

“We wanted to prove that we were a trusted tool first with the clubs,” Felton-Thomas said. “What the new app does is it brings in more of those elements that players get to see, ‘OK, how do I get better if I’m not good enough today?’ We’ve got a bit more player focus to that journey of development, not just trialing.”

The aiScout app will be the focal point, especially early in the partnership, but the company also maintains mobile sport science centers, aiLabs, that has additional evaluative tools for biomechanics and cognitive function.

As the partnership progresses, each MLS club will be able to customize their use to include additional tests, datapoints and benchmarks that are bespoke to their needs. Schlosser said, to his knowledge, none of the league’s clubs have harnessed computer vision at the amateur level before, but he said they are eager to get started.

“The system is up and running in the UK,” he said. “They’ve done some trials with a couple of UK-based teams, so we have some confidence that this isn’t just fly-by-night stuff. This is real. And we’re excited to roll up our sleeves and then roll this out across the country. We think there are many, many kids that we haven’t seen yet.”

This article was brought to you by SBJ Tech, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SBJ Tech content in the field of athletic performance.

By John Portch

Justin Bokmeyer was announced as the first General Manager of MLS NEXT in February.

The New York-based MLS NEXT was founded in 2020 as a youth soccer league in the United States and Canada with a view to establishing itself as the premier talent identification and development program in North American soccer.

It is well on the way to achieving that aim. In a little over three years, MLS NEXT has grown to consist of 137 clubs, 628 teams and more than 13,500 players.

Bokmeyer was seen as the ideal candidate for the GM position following his sterling work at the NBA where as the Head of Strategic Initiatives he helped to found the Basketball Africa League. Earlier in his career, he also served as the Director of Lacrosse Operations at the United States Military Academy at West Point for two years and spent 11 years on active duty in the US Army.

The Leaders Performance Institute asks Bokmeyer if he was attracted to MLS NEXT because, much like the Basketball Africa League, it is a new venture.

“Absolutely,” he replies. “In my military career and in working in the NBA, I was working in new things and got to build them from scratch.” He cites examples from the athletic department at West Point, where he helped to establish programs, as well as the numerous NBA academies set up on his watch. “That was one of the exciting things about me taking this MLS NEXT role. I don’t know if I can jump into something that’s set for 20 or 30 years. That’s a very different mindset and a very different leadership skill.”

MLS NEXT’s aim is to provide the requisite coaching contact and a unified approach akin to the English Premier League’s Elite Player Performance Plan that taps into the region’s large talent pool.

Here, the Leaders Performance Institute outlines Bokmeyer’s first steps.

Year one, hands-on

Bokmeyer explains that he feels he needs to be heavily involved in his first year as GM. “I’m very hands-on this year but then, leading into next season, people should feel very empowered,” he says. “They’ll know our culture, the standards, our norms. They’ll know which decisions they can make.” There are, at present, ten people on his staff who share responsibilities for operating and executing the program, player engagement and experience, and commercial opportunities.

Bokmeyer has ensured that roles and responsibilities are clearly defined across the team. “It’s the focus on how we work,” he continues. “It’s being very deliberate in the platforms we use, how we communicate, when we meet, what decisions need to come to me, being very deliberate in how we work.”

MLS NEXT has made inroads but brought onboard its first GM because the league understands there is still a ways to go. “One of the things that I pride myself on is being able to piece things together; really diving into how we make those decisions and what the long-term effects are. Are we solving the problem we need to solve? The ability to think through second and third order effects is one that I pride myself on, making sure that we stay focused on what we’re trying to solve for.”

Development tools

Bokmeyer has introduced a series of tools to support his staff’s development. “We held a staff meeting on the theme of decision making and so we introduced the idea to them around a decision journal and why that’s important for different decisions,” he says.

He also introduced the Questions & Empathy card deck to his team. It is a 56-card companion to Michael Ventura’s book Applied Empathy. “Seeking clearer understanding or deeper connections?” asks the Questions & Empathy website, “Let these cards guide your conversation and exploration.” The deck is: “designed to help inspire empathic exchanges among individuals, teams, and communities alike.”

Says Bokmeyer: “How do you have deeper conversations and get to know people so you develop that trust quicker? You really speed up that learning; and so I use those questions and empathy decks often within our group to open up conversation.”

The work of Daniel Coyle, author of the Talent Code and Culture Code, has proven useful too, with some tools freely available on his website.

‘What keeps you up at night?’

Bokmeyer and his staff will endeavour to visit each of MLS NEXT’s 137 clubs at suitable moments. “I’ve told my team several times that we cannot lead and be actual leaders from the New York office,” he says. “We have to be out to see the environments and talking to people. We’re in this initiative now over the next couple of months visiting all parts of the country, seeing the clubs, MLS clubs, non-MLS academies, anybody and everybody, getting out there, talking to them, and meeting them in their environment and not over Zoom. That lowers the defences, it creates more trust, and so we’re absolutely committed to getting out there.”

He runs through his itinerary at the time of our interview. “We’re going to hit the four clubs in San Diego next week; a couple of weeks ago I was at a site visit in south Florida for an event and visited the local clubs, five clubs in Miami, to make sure that I attend matches, training and see their facilities. Really trying to understand it is critical. You lose so much if we say we’re going to make these policies from the New York office.”

What is the first thing he asks those stakeholders? “What keeps them up at night?” he says. “That’s the biggest thing. Absolutely understanding that. Everybody we’re visiting, they’ve got to play the long game and we’re requiring them to play the long game and focus on that while they have to produce short-term results. And I know that they have families – their jobs and livelihood depend on that. So trying to balance that. Understanding what keeps them up at night is critical, whether that’s they don’t have enough players, their talent ID process is wrong, who they’re hiring, anything like that, we want to know. Then really focusing on what we can do to improve.

“Tell us your recommendations, competition schedule, talent ID, roster numbers, any of that. We’ve got this blank slate. ‘Tell us, if you were in our role, what would you do? What would you be looking at?’ That really brings out some good insights across the board from all these clubs.”

The role of college soccer

Bokmeyer believes that young players growing up in North America may have a unique opportunity to sample different sports to a competitive level. “I think the benefits of being exposed to a lot of different sports in the United States and Canada can provide a unique athletic skillset that other countries may not have,” he says.

Tapping into the large talent pool remains the primary goal. “How can we access that talent pool better? We’ve got some things in the works with technology and AI, but we want to be able to canvass the entirety of North America and find the players that could be hidden in different parts of the country.”

He also feels that the unique North American college system can complement MLS NEXT’s goals. “We know that 90% of our players won’t go pro pathway right away,” he adds. “Everyone is looking to go to college unless you’re going pro, so we have to ensure that the right conversations are happening, that the players are deciding what’s best for them and their development and not pushing them either way.

“We still see the college pathway as being a unique ecosystem for late developers or bloomers. If you look at Matt Turner, who played university college soccer in the US and now look at him playing in the Premier League with Arsenal. He’s one of those guys. We had 19 players who played at NEXT, went to college, and then were drafted in the MLS SuperDraft this past year. So there is still a viable pathway for NEXT players to go to college and then get drafted at some point during their college career and still get that chance.”

What’s next?

The research on athlete maturation by Sean Cumming at the University of Bath is of considerable interest to Bokmeyer, as is biomechanics, but, beyond specific physical markers, his immediate interest is to stimulate MLS NEXT’s development.

“We’re very clear on what we want to accomplish, we know how we’re going to do that, and we’ve got the things in place to do it and we’ve got the right clubs in place as well,” he says. “That’s through our standards and governance, that’s through clear communication and trust between the league and member clubs. And what it looks like is absolutely athlete-centred, and that’s putting player’s rights, whether it’s their data, first and foremost. We want to be aligned in our behaviours and in what we do – and we won’t have to be talking about that because it’ll just be known that we are athlete-centred. They’ll see that it’ll just be part of the behaviour and culture that we’ve set.”

By John Portch

In 2022, the Premier League, Football Association (FA) and English Football League (EFL) celebrated ten years of its Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP).

The EPPP was launched in 2012 to overhaul the English boys academy system and ensure the development of a higher quantity – and better quality – of ‘home grown’ players at a time when English talent pathways were widely considered to be lagging behind their counterparts in nations such as France, Germany and Spain. The EPPP was adopted across the academies of the English men’s football pyramid from the Premier League to League 2.

Today, the top line numbers released by the Premier League, FA and EFL indicate that the EPPP has had a positive impact. For example, there are 762 more academy graduates with professional contracts in the English leagues than there were during the 2012-13 season. There has also been progress at international level, where the England youth and senior men’s teams have enjoyed considerable success in recent years. The EPPP faces the constant challenge of trying to satisfy all its stakeholders, but English football is better at transitioning home-grown talent than it was in 2012.

The plan is overseen by the Premier League’s Director of Football Neil Saunders, who spoke about the progress made in the last decade at the 2022 Leaders Sport Performance Summit at London’s Twickenham Stadium.

Saunders’ appearance came shortly after the publication of the EPPP’s first 10-year review and, here, the Leaders Performance Institute highlights six ways in which the initiative seeks to address some of our members’ most pressing concerns around talent pathways and player evaluation.

1. The predictors of success

What are the best predictors of success in youth and academy football? No club or organisation claims to have all the answers, but the EPPP has been designed to maximise the opportunity for those who enter talent pathways from under-nine and upwards. The approach is based on the Four Corner Model for long-term player development. The ‘four corners’ – technical, psychological, physical and social – were applied to the FA’s Future Game Plan in 2010, which according to the EPPP review, ‘has been adapted and tailored by each club according to their own playing and coaching philosophy.’ All clubs have developed an Academy Performance Plan in line with its vision, philosophy and strategy. These Academy Performance Plans also integrate ‘core programmes of the EPPP, such as: education, games programme, coaching, and performance support.’

2. The value placed on coaching expertise

In the discourse around talent pathways, some have bemoaned the fact that coaches have not always been credited for their inherent expertise, that they are too readily dismissed for not being objective. The EPPP works at a systemic level to underline the value placed in coaches and, since its inception, there has been an increase of approximately 50% in the number of coaching hours available to young players at English clubs. ‘Changes to the coaching offer since the EPPP have been led by three key factors,’ says the review. The first is ‘quality’. The EPPP set standards that focused on elements such as ‘different aspects of the game as a player progresses, including age-specific coaching and coaches.’ Then there is ‘access’, which is where the EPPP tried to bring coaching hours ‘in line with leading practices across multiple sports and disciplines’. Finally, the question of ‘development’, which is the effort to offer coaches ‘new individualised programmes and qualification requirements, tailored to each phase and Academy category.’

3. Collecting varied and valued views when player profiling

Through the aforementioned Academy Performance Plans, the EPPP enables multidisciplinary player profiling. ‘Performance support staff work closely with other key Academy staff groups to aid and inform player identification, development, and transition along the pathway,’ the review says. ‘Academies have increasingly taken an integrated and holistic approach to delivering individual programmes, tailored for age and stage of a player’s development’. ‘Generally, [the EPPP] has led to more informed discussions and a genuine appreciation of the capacity an individual player can express given the physical and mental limitations imposed by their stage of development,’ wrote Edd Vahid, the Head of Academy Operations at the Premier League – and Leaders Performance Advisor – in 2021 while still working at Southampton’s academy.

4. Combatting biases and underrepresentation

The fear of biases undermining decision-making in talent development and evaluation is universal. For its part, the EPPP has taken steps to abate the effects of relative age effect. ‘As a global phenomenon,’ says the review, ‘a higher proportion of boys in the Academy system are born in the first quarter of the academic year’. The system has organised festivals for children born towards the end of the academic year, but ‘analysis has shown that this bias does not necessarily translate to the likelihood to succeed in the professional game’. Indeed, the provisions of the EPPP understand that the transition to senior football is not one-size-fits-all, that player journeys are unique.

There are, however, three broad player ‘archetypes’ found across English football, according to the review. First is the ‘fast-tracked’ player, such as Liverpool’s Trent Alexander-Arnold, who broke into the senior team as a 19-year-old; second is the ‘focused development’ player, such as Harvey Barnes of Leicester City, who took targeted loans (temporary transferral of his registration from his parent club to a loan club) before making his Premier League debut; third is the ‘tiered progression’ player, such as Aston Villa’s Ollie Watkins, who had extensive lower league experience (including some targeted loans) before making his Premier League debut at 25.

There is also the question of underrepresentation of players with Asian backgrounds in the academies of English football. During the 2021-22 season, and within the auspices of the EPPP, the South Asian Action Plan was launched in partnership with the anti-racism football charity Kick It Out. Says the review: ‘It aims to ensure that every player has the opportunity to achieve their potential in football through the delivery of research, staff training and Emerging Talent Festivals focused on equal access and improving pathways through the Academy system.’ It states that 648 players attended an Emerging Talent Festival during the 2021-22 season and there has been a more than 60% increase in academy scholars from black, Asian, mixed and other backgrounds in the last ten seasons. There is, however, much work still to be done on that front.

5. Self-evaluation for players and coaches

The EPPP provides a uniform structure to academies, who then issue players with bespoke individual development plans (IDPs). IDPs are useful for assessing how a player is developing against the principles set out on an academy’s talent pathway. The resulting contrasts can often validate the methods being used, one of which is self-reflection. IDPs provide the space for players to self-reflect with increasing emphasis as they progress along the pathway. The review says IDPs aim ‘to be aspirational and provide the right level of challenge to encourage the individual to maximise their potential as a player and as a person’.

Teams also place an emphasis on player and team analysis. ‘Academy players fully understand the demands of the game, with a deliberate focus on performance analysis education to equip them with the skillset to drive their own development, underpinned with a unique club philosophy and data-driven approach.’

The EPPP also supports a player’s academic progression and seeks to provide both life skills and what the review terms ‘life-enriching experiences’. According to the review, more than 20,000 players have attended the academy life skills and personal development programme since its introduction.

As for coaches on the EPPP, they are invited to join a ‘community of learning’ as part of English football’s Integrated Coaching Strategy, which is ‘a multi-stakeholder partnership to deliver and sustain world-leading coach and manager education, development and career pathways across English Men’s and Women’s professional football.’

6. Continual reviewing and updating of the plan

During its ten-year existence, the EPPP has never stood still. Tweaks have been made across the board, whether it’s the academy games programme, which was redesigned and enhanced during the 2013-14 season or the creation of the Professional Game Academy Audit Company, between 2018-19 and 2020-21, which provides ‘an independent and comprehensive audit of rules and standards to clubs.’ Competition rules will continually be updated, new processes introduced, and priority areas identified.

By John Portch

• Do you guarantee the quality of experience for your athletes?

• It can be helpful to look over the fence but don’t be swayed by external noise.

• Fill your ranks with specialists coaches and reward them suitably.

Experience is everything

Are you creating an environment where everyone – athletes and their parents or guardians – wants to be? Don Barrell, the Head of Performance Programmes & Pathways at the Rugby Football Union [RFU], believes it is essential. He told the Leaders Performance Institute in 2021 that, “If your primary driver is the quality of experience that people have, both the player and all the surrounding stakeholders, you can create a model where people want to be there and choose to come into your programme as opposed to others and that’s where we’ve positioned our programme.”

Establish age-specific priorities

A smart talent pathway recognises that what an athlete needs as a teenager is not necessarily what an athlete needs at 25. “The whole purpose of it is that you’ve got two or three years to look at players and  for them to be nurtured and developed; go through puberty, grow, change, held by some really core principles,” said Barrell. “One of the big challenges is when the top of the game says it needs A, B and C – at 14 that will look very different and we probably don’t need to see A, B and C, we may just focus on one thing.”

Stick to your guns

Being aware of best practice is one thing, but once you have established your guiding principles, stick to them. Barrell said: “If you keep compromising because someone else will do ‘something’ and you feel the need to react then you’ll end up with six-year-olds in academies as everyone races to the bottom. We have set a clear line based on solid evidence and practice.”

Ask: who is the athletes’ main point of contact?

Talent pathways at club and international level are inevitably different in English rugby union and Barrell was keen to avoid stepping on the toes of the clubs with whom the RFU works. “The whole myth of age-grade international programmes – and I’m not trying to talk myself out of a job here – the majority of contact is at the school, club, academy. Pre-18, it is not with an international programme. Age 18-20, it’s still not with an international programme – 80 percent of your contact is still within your club,” he said. “The international programme’s job is to add value to the journey and act as a critical friend to the clubs, working with them to develop the players. We have excellent people who work with the academies and schools to help shape practice.”

Employ both specialists and agitators

Any talent pathway needs its specialist coaches who are happy to work at academy level. “If we want world class development systems then we need to reward those world class practitioners who want to specialise with young athletes. Having your most knowledgeable people working in the pathway, a good pathway will make your senior teams better and add huge value,” said Barrell. “You will always have some coaches that want to go in and progress to a senior role. That’s fine, but I’d suggest if you’re running the system, you need to understand how many of those you’ve got versus how many people you can install who want to stay in development.”

Temper the input of senior coaches

Beware the input of the senior coach. “One big challenge you find across all sports is the idea that senior coaches have all the answers the whole way through,” said Barrell. “Senior coaches often specialise for the here and now, ‘how do we win this weekend?’ Bringing expertise at the top end of the game is critical, as this is where our players end up, but is it always right for the developing player?; the same way I don’t need my primary school kids being taught by a university lecturer.”

By Sarah Evans and Luke Whitworth

Recommended reading

How Do you Ensure you Are Giving Talent the Time to Hit your Performance Metrics?

Why Are The Red Bull Soccer Teams So Good at Talent Identification?

The Importance of Diversity in the Decision-Making Processes Around Talent ID and Development

Framing the topic

Understanding what talent is now versus future potential is a constant question within much of our membership here within the Leaders Performance Institute. Therefore, within this topic-led roundtable discussion we wanted to delve into our members’ current thinking around player evaluation and talent identification, as well as how they are looking to develop this further in practice.

Due to the popularity of the topic, we split the group into two to cover more of the detail.

Group 1:

• From one of the cricket environments on the call, one of the best predictors of players that progress is aggregated scouting views and insight. Utilising that expertise in a structured way.
• We can be our own worst enemy in sport in that we sometimes don’t give expertise the credibility it deserves. What we should do is regard expert opinion as evidence, but sometimes we can counter it by saying it’s not objective.
• When considering player profiling and the notion of starting by looking at the end in mind and working back, we can still see a challenge in taking people on the journey around doing that, especially with having a number of different opinions and bringing them in, making the decision and deciding what goes into that profile.
• Ideally, we want to give individuals autonomy to reflect their own thinking but you have to have enough uniformity to have contrasting validity. Where we have seen this work well is when you have a solid structure, but a small bit of flexibility to meet individual needs, whilst at the time making it uniformed enough to scale across the organisation. It’s about finding a balance in that tension.
• Another challenge around player profiling is that the coaches who provide information to others feel like it’s valued. Consider the reference points of athletes who have come through the pathway because their opportunities and experiences to get to the top will be different. It begs a wider question around how we continue to provide opportunity more often for our players and predict that better.
• In terms of profiling, what emphasis are we putting on age within an academy environment? You can work towards a profile but we can’t mix technical, tactical, physical and mental competencies, so how are we diversifying this along the path?
• One of the organisations on the call conducted some research on players who had bridged the gap between the pathway and entering the first team environment – they looked at what attributes they had versus the others, and specifically the breakdown of technical, tactical, physical variables and which of these were set and which naturally developed. This allowed them to profile the players that made it, what differentiated them, what is fixed at the specific age and what can be manipulated in the environment.
• Self-evaluation is important and something that is not always considered. We can evaluate the player but they are able to evaluate themselves. We are on the right track because it is about the athlete. We are not here to guarantee athletes to play in the first team, but we are here to help maximise their potential and to support them to develop a skill in themselves to become more self-aware. This can provide us with a bit of insight into their potential as well – how actively engaged and involved are they in their own career?
• Peer evaluation is also a concept that one of the environments on the call has looked to implement across their programmes. Spend time asking the cohort of players to give you their insights into each other because they tend to know each other well.
• When thinking about the broad theme of evaluation, the group felt there is an opportunity for psychological or mental evaluation. What are the best models out there to benchmark? An important thing to consider is that the environment you are in has a large influence on how you show up. Measuring personality characteristics etc can yield some interesting insights in terms of what we see around behaviours.
• Constantly review capability, motivation and opportunity as these are the areas we will see small shifts in behaviour change.
• Do you understand what makes your athletes tick? It’s a simple question and many of us say we do, but how much time do you spend on it in terms of identifying those insights and then consistently evaluating those through good conversations with the multidisciplinary teams?
• With younger athletes, there has been a shift in the social part of being within an environment – they want to spend time with others and that’s how they like to turn up. Some programmes are concerned that social contexts can be impacted when some athletes don’t make the next step.
• Swimming Australia has done a good job in supporting coach’s decision making through the use of data and analytics – they have done this through corrective adjustment alongside relative age affect. We know about the influence of early maturation and how this biases decisions. The real key for them is how they have been working with the coaches, athletes and parents to explain the insights and decisions they are making.
• We see a big opportunity for artificial intelligence in the prediction of performance, but a challenge that accompanies this cultural adoption. Where insights being offered aren’t comparable to a genuine expert, you need that engagement to be able to advance the technology. How are we shaping an environment where we get that buy-in?
• We are still seeing both opportunities and challenges in how coaches can use data and insights to influence decision making. More often than not we see coaches revert back to their own observation or ‘last experiences’. An opportunity is how we engage them earlier in the process.
• Getting an understanding of what your environment can affect is a key metric that an organisation in the AFL spends time looking at. Do you have an understanding of what your coaching group or programme have been historically good at in developing or supporting change in an athlete? Having an objective view of what you have been good at changing can help to inform what types of athletes you might be interested in bringing in.

Group 2:

• One team in the AFL begin by looking at their current group of senior players, asking the question ‘who’s responded to this environment?’, understanding their characteristics, and then taking a step back to see who they might have missed within this process. By using the word ‘responded’ they mean ‘demonstrated success as a senior player’.
• Within this process, the scouts are part of the coaching conversations. The Head of Recruitment is part of building the mental model that the multidisciplinary team are trying to understand. They then also utilise data from many different disciplines to try and get as holistic approach to this process as possible.
• Another organisation looks to support coaches through a series of Talent ID workshops. They bring the coaches together and ask them to select a group of two men and two women for a fictional team at the Olympics, based on four profiles for each respectively. They select the four athletes solely based on data and factors such as their home life, education, sporting background, psychological and physiological profile. These coaches then made judgements based on the data, and select four, however, what they don’t know is that each of the profiles is of Olympic Champions in different sports. The purpose of the exercise is to challenge their thinking around talent identification and move away from solely looking at data, and understanding what biases they might be bringing into the process. What they have found is that often the most important factors are the things that are harder to quantify, ‘the bit between the ears’, and they are still working at developing this further.
• Often one issue which affects team sports more than individuals is that within teams, comparisons are made against other players too early. It is important to understand their trajectory and where they could go with their potential. However, this is very hard to really ever know. Therefore, one organisation aims to give the athlete as large a variety of different experiences as possible to cope with whatever they might face as they progress through the pathway and they are better equipped to handle these challenges as they encounter them.
• Does the athlete have some key characteristics?
  • Attitude to learning
  • Focus
  • Drive
  • Emotional intelligence
• Understanding different cultures, and who the athletes are as a whole person is a key consideration when trying to develop them. Especially within Australia, understanding the aboriginal culture, and how to best support these athletes as they relocate or change environments. Therefore, the role of mentoring and player welfare is crucial in supporting them.
• ‘Win now’ vs. ‘potential’ mentality. This can depend on the level of performance for each situation, but balancing this and the expectations of the whole team. Having clarity on which of these you are striving for is critical.
• Where are we creating limitations for our athletes? There is the pressure of time in sport, but how can we use this as a de-limitation?
• Utilising AAR – After Action Reviews – to debrief and assess what was done well, what did we miss and how we can improve. Often because of the pace of time this process is either not done or not done with enough intention, and we could be missing a huge opportunity to understand how to develop our athletes and not make the same mistakes moving forwards.
• How can we leverage on our athletes’ strengths? Find something that they are outstanding at and build on that even further.
• Is player evaluation also looking at the composition of the team? Developing thinking around how best to build the most successful team based on different factors.