England's bid for future football success has got a technology boost thanks to a new partnership between the FA and Google Cloud.
The sport's governing body has announced the creation of a new analytics system built entirely on Google Cloud, which will hopefully in turn improve the performance of the national team.
The new Player Profile System (PPS) will brings together the mountains of data the FA currently holds, including video, player GPS and more into a single central location.
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On the ball
Google Cloud, which was recently chose as the official cloud and data analytics partner for the England Teams and St George’s Park, says that the partnership will help create a "better future for football", with the PPS being made available to all 28 teams at St George's Park.
The PPS will be the first central analytics system for the FA, with coaches and players previously needing to do their own deep dives through the terabytes of data on file.
Going forward, the PPS will be used to measure performance, fitness, training and form of players at all levels. It will also use Google Cloud smart analytics, data management solutions and machine learning capabilities to provide near real-time data analysis, allowing the FA to better compare and analyse team and player performance.
The FA is currently engaged in a wide-ranging digital transformation project aimed at embracing the use of technology as it pushes towards World Cup success for the 2022 Men's World Cup and 2023 Women's World Cup.
"We believe technology is a key area of potential competitive advantage for our 28 teams and everything we do at St George’s Park," said Dave Reddin, The FA’s Head of Team Strategy and Performance.
"We have progressively built a systematic approach to developing winning England teams and through the support of Google Cloud technology we wish to accelerate our ability to translate insight and learning into performance improvements.”
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