In focus at Fifa World Cup, tech is at play on Indian sports fields too

From AI-driven cameras to websites and apps that log and help analyse data

“Today, when photographers give the players pictures, it is for social media,” Renedy Singh laughs. “But when I was playing, on the rare occasion that we got pictures, it was mostly used for self-reflection and analysis, to check our positioning, technique etc.”

Renedy, a former Indian football captain and currently the technical director at the Classic Football Academy in Imphal, is among the best of a new generation of coaches in India today. Analysis and fault-redressal are a key part of his job, assisting which are innovations in technology.

While Classic academy’s modest budgets do not allow for high-grade tech yet, training is recorded on video, which is then translated and simplified by data experts for players.

Other clubs have taken a different approach. At FC Madras, for example, training is still recorded by video, albeit using artificial intelligence (AI) technology that is slowly taking over the Indian sports industry. 

“We use Pixellot’s tech, which can be customised according to our preferences to give us details that perhaps human beings might miss,” Aadhithya Chakravarthy, head of football operations and technical development at FC Madras, says. Chakravarthy has worked in similar roles at Hockey India as well as RoundGlass Punjab FC — another club that is currently using Pixellot technology for analysis.

Pixellot’s game is simple. It offers two types of AI-enabled cameras, which track either the ball, or specific players, depending on what the user feeds into the system. A key component is its ability to never miss any action — the camera is a wide angle that covers the entire pitch — and ease of set-up. It can simply be mounted on a tripod, and set to record. The feed can then be used for multiple analysis, cut and edited to suit presentations.

Founded in 2013 in Israel, the company is the world’s largest producer of live sports content and specialises in live multi-angled sports production. Having acquired VidSwap (a sports video editing and analytics firm) in 2019, Pixellot combined its production skills with VidSwap’s analytical algorithms to produce the cameras revolutionising the market today. 

At an exhibition in November in Delhi last year, Pixellot CEO Alon Werber expressed excitement over seeing their product infiltrate the Indian grassroots sports market. In the presence of many coaches, performance directors and leading professionals from different federations and sports, Pixellot’s presentations highlighted the need for better analysis at the lower levels of Indian sport.

Dhananjay Mahadik, who worked as a video analyst for the Indian men’s hockey team between 2013 and 2015, says that even the slightest tweaks in technology go a long way towards improving standards across the sport. “When I worked with the team, Terry Walsh [the coach at the time] specifically wanted to understand and show players how and at what specific times their performances dipped during a game.”

In a game like hockey, where rolling substitutions are the norm, coaches utilise the rule to ensure players perform at peak capacity through the 60-minute period. Physical capacities, stamina, conditioning as well as tactics determine substitutions.

The world’s leading countries often make as many as eight rolling substitutions within a 15-minute quarter — players essentially performing at peak capacity for 3-4 minutes before being pulled off. This happens frequently as the game drags on into the final stages. 

“Indian players would often get offended at being pulled off,” Mahadik, a former international defender himself, says. “It became a personal affront, especially if you were pulled off at crunch time.” The challenge, therefore, became convincing them that not only was it good for the team but also for personal performance to do this.

Mahadik would work with physical conditioning specialists — who used heart rate monitors in-game to track various physical metrics — to gather data, interspersed it with video that showed their mistakes accumulating at the same time as their heart rates peaked to prove the link between the two. “Once they saw this, they’d accept the subs gratefully,” he laughs. 

In football, Instat, a Moscow-headquartered website dedicated to sports performance analysis — which includes video data — for players registered with clubs, makes it all easy. Shouvik Mukhopadhyay, head of Instat India, says that the Indian football ecosystem is hugely reliant on the website for scouting and recruiting players during the transfer window.

“You can get the most detailed statistics. For example, you can find out the number of times a player wins an aerial duel, and then compare it to a previous season, when, perhaps, he was with a different club,” he says. “The data can help inform and make decisions about team compositions. Players use it themselves to see where their weaknesses lie.”

Pushpender Singh, founder of fitness company Power of Basics, who is currently the strength and conditioning coach of Rajasthan United FC, testifies to the benefit of technology and AI in sport, but also cautions against over-reliance. 

“We have to remember that these are tools,” he says. “And like any tool, they are highly dependent on the person using it. Often, I have seen coaches and trainers use this data to offer advice that can be counter-productive or, worse, counter-intuitive.”

An example of this, Singh says, can be found on the many fitness influencers on Instagram offering data analytics-based advice that is generic and often short term. Paid to promote certain brands that monitor blood sugar, heart rate, blood pressure etc, influencers design workouts that suit their physiology, in their geography, and market it to millions. This ends up hurting more people than it benefits. 

This Saturday (January 7), the All India Football Federation is scheduled to release its strategic roadmap for Indian football over the next 25 years. There is hope that there will be more interest in ensuring technology is accessible through the grassroots to enable growth.  

Even on the pitch, while tech offers a lot, humans offer more. More so, at the grassroots.

“At the end of the day, you need a person to explain what is wrong and what is right,” Renedy says. “And the video itself doesn’t achieve anything. Coaches then have to design drills, sessions, and even work with players individually to correct mistakes. A huge amount of this is muscle memory, so repetition matters more than observation.” 

Tech in play

Instat: The website and app produce and log data analytics for footballers and clubs across the ecosystem — provided the club or the player is playing a professional, Fifa-recognised league. It is used by scouts to help locate transfer targets. Players themselves use the software to track performance 

Pixellot: Pixellot’s AI-driven cameras help coaches track player movement and ball movement, thereby aiding analysts in predicting, modelling and correcting mistakes made and tactics employed

Heart rate monitors: Companies like Fitogether, Catapult and PlayerTek make wearable heart rate monitors that give accurate data to help physical conditioning coaches and players themselves track physical performance metrics and derive meaning from them