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Die Schule des Fußballs Wissenschaft

By Matt   Dee  ::  14/03/2012   13 Comments (»Last)

Something a bit left-field here to take (some of) the mind off the derby humiliation.

I remember reading this story more than 18 months ago after England were roundly spanked by Germany in the World Cup, and it's been lingering in the back of my mind ever since.

Ages before that tournament, the DfB recruited a team of sports science students at Cologne Univerity to painstakingly analyse footage of all of Germany's potential opponents and base the German team's tactics around the findings. OK, so they didn't win the tournament but their performance against England brutally demonstrated how the appliance of science could enable a largely inexperienced team to expose England's ahem, 'golden generation' as the over-rated sham they really are, (and made a fool of Capello for a laugh). The triumph of intelligence over hype.

I remember reading this and thinking it was a great idea ? finally some bright spark (Jurgen Klinsmann in fact) has realised the benefits of pumping some serious brainwork into football to go with the obscene amounts of cash.

To the point: I'd like to see Everton experiment with this idea at club level, and right now might not be a bad time to give it a go. With the club locked in a permanent state of financial stalemate should we not be looking to harness any alternative advantages we can? Love or loathe Moyes, his approach to managing Everton has been forcably centered around finding alternative ways to succeed in the absence of pure spending power (you know, those tiresome cliches the pundits love to churn out when talking about Moyes's Everton ? work ethic, good organisation, blah blah...) so I'd guess he might be open to suggestion. Liverpool University has a (well renowned as far as I know) football department so it seems Everton would be well placed to recruit a team of boffins as tactical support staff. Undoubtedly football management is a stressfull business so this would also ease some of the pressures off Moyes's furrowed brow. If it doesn't work, no great loss (and if it does for god's sake keep it under wraps!)

Can anyone really claim there isn't room for more brains in football?

School of Soccer Science anyone?

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