Sevilla FC is hosting this week a European Club Association (ECA) knowledge exchange conference, which will take place both at the Ciudad Deportiva José Ramón Cisneros Palacios and at the Estadio Ramón Sánchez-Pizjuán. On this occasion, the subject to be dealt with is the methodology followed by the club in its youth academy, one of the most fruitful on the national scene. It will take place over three days, from Tuesday to Thursday, through theoretical and practical training sessions given by Sevilla FC staff, members of the ECA since its creation in 2008.
To do so, the participants will use the training sessions of the teams of the different youth categories. The first two days will be held at the sports facilities, precisely for this purpose. In addition, this Tuesday Sevilla FC will host UD Almería at the Ramón Sánchez-Pizjuán in the seventh LaLiga matchday, which means that the Sevilla stadium will be able to host the final matchday on Thursday. On that day, all the participants, at the end of their final sessions, will get to know the inside of the stadium and all the special features of the Stadium Tour.
Sevilla FC has been present this week at the prestigious ‘Sport Summit Leaders’ congress held in Argentina, where it was represented by Juan Esteban Gómez, the club’s coordinator for digitization and continuous improvement. He did so by sharing with the attendees the innovation and data management model for professional football carried out by Sevilla FC, which was described by the event’s moderator as “a success story and a model to follow,” considering the results achieved
Since 2019, when the ‘Innovation Center’ was launched as a meeting point for the innovative proposals that the club offers to the sports industry, the number of projects that provide added value through work processes has been increasing. “We need to generate capital gains and new business lines, which is why the project is not just a one-time need,” said Juan Esteban, before gradually explaining the work that is being carried out. “Making mistakes is allowed, but not trying is not,” he added when explaining the creation of three key areas: R&D&I, Data, and Innovation Center.
The R&D&I area comprises four pillars: Medicine and Sports Science, Data Football, Analysis and Digitalization, and Performance. All with the aim of “contributing to the achievement of the sporting goals through the pursuit of excellence by means of research, development, and the implementation of technology and methodologies that improve the first team’s results,” in the words of Juan Esteban. Another concept conveyed referred to the importance of sharing knowledge: “If we want to innovate, it’s foolish to think that we have all the knowledge ourselves; we should invite people and companies that want to become part of our organization.”
The representative of Sevilla FC also explained projects that have been implemented and are the result of the organization’s technological commitment., one of these projects is AI FOOTBALL, which aims to search for and characterize players; AI RADAR, which has become a “lighthouse” for tracking the market; AI TRACKING, which has subsequently been commercialized with LaLiga Tech as TRANSFER TRACKER, a service for all clubs worldwide that helps determine the corresponding training rights for your players; AI TICKETING, an AI-based platform that predicts stadium attendance at Ramón Sánchez-Pizjuán; AI FANS, currently in development to better understand and interact with fans; and AI PATROCINIOS, which enables sponsor scouting.
Juan Esteban concluded by emphasizing the importance of people with an inspired focus to build work processes based on continuous improvement supported by technology.
The Sevilla FC Innovation Center continues to capture the attention of both insiders and outsiders. The platform where the entire innovation proposal that the club offers to the world of sports converges has been featured in the latest edition of the prestigious ‘Tesis’ program on Canal Sur TV. The television program, focused on the dissemination of the work carried out in all the universities of Andalusia, delved into the promotion and development of R&D&I projects carried out at Sevilla FC., which is the only club that has a chair at a university
It is the ‘Sevilla FC: University, Business, and Sports’ Chair, based at Pablo de Olavide University. This chair is primarily focused on the sports field – sports sciences. The goal is to develop an integrated system of research, training, analysis, information, and dissemination activities in areas related to the university, business, and sports domains. Through this chair, Sevilla FC manages to identify and foster talent, as well as contribute to employability, with over a dozen UPO students joining the club in some of its key departments.
In this latest edition of ‘Tesis’, José María Cruz Gallardo, Head of R&D&I at Sevilla FC, explains the club’s commitment as follows: “Student training starts at the university, but at Sevilla FC what we aim to do is contribute, in each training modality, our bit of knowledge so that this training is as closely aligned as possible with the realities of the market, and specifically, with the unique realities of Sevilla FC. We can provide students with a stable and reliable professional environment in which they can grow and apply the education they receive from the university”.
Meanwhile, Laura López de la Cruz, Vice Chancellor of UPO, summarizes the importance of this initiative in the program: “The Sevilla FC Chair serves a key role, which is to merge the knowledge generated in the university with its practical application in the business and society. It promotes the creation of businesses and sports, and thanks to an organization as significant as Sevilla FC, we achieve greater visibility and reach more people”.
Budapest is not only the capital of Hungary but during this week it is also the capital of European football with the celebration of the UEFA Europa League final between Sevilla FC and AS Roma. The Club is present in the city of the Danube not only for its sporting merits, but also for being a reference in technological development in football. Not in vain, it was invited prior to the semi-finals for the ‘Football Forum Hungary 2023’, which was held at the Groupama Arena in Budapest on Tuesday and which dealt with all the current issues in professional football, serving as a meeting point for the exchange of information and knowledge.
Sevilla FC’s presence at the congress was by no means testimonial, but rather played a leading role with two presentations given by Juan Esteban Gómez Llamas, head of digitalisation in the Football R&D&I Department. In the first of these, he explained the Club’s commitment to innovation through its Innovation Center. Specifically, he focused on the use of data for player recruitment and talent development, with tools such as ‘AiFootball’, developed exclusively by Sevilla FC.
In addition, Juan Esteban Gómez participated in a second presentation, together with the delegate and head of business development of LaLiga in Hungary, Jesús Pizarro Bravo, focused on technological development in general. An aspect in which Sevilla FC has been an international reference for several years now. In addition to delving into the origin of this strategic commitment of the Entity, the presentation showed as an example the creation of ‘Transfer Tracker’. A tool devised by Sevilla FC, aimed at optimising economic income from training rights (FIFA’s solidarity mechanism) and which has been marketed internationally through LaLiga Tech. An unprecedented milestone at club level.
The LaLiga Impulse Plan has been a significant advancement for Spanish football clubs in terms of innovation, allowing them to materialize many of their future projects. In the case of Sevilla FC, talking about innovation is discussing one of the pillars of its strategic plan for the coming years. Technological development is a major commitment that is positioning the club at the forefront of European football. This is a path that all areas of the organization are taking, with a particular emphasis on the sports sector, where women’s football plays a significant role in present and future plans.
In this sense, the arrival of the Impulse Plan and CVC funds has facilitated the implementation of technological systems throughout the structure of Sevilla FC’s women’s academy. ‘Our commitment to women’s football is not something new, but this contribution pushes us to grow more in terms of human resources and facilities,’ explains Ramón Rodríguez Verdejo, Monchi, the club’s Sporting Director. ‘The R&D department presented this project to us, and we understood that it was an opportunity to streamline and reduce the time it takes for a player to reach and adapt to the first team,’ emphasizes Amparo Gutiérrez, Director of Women’s Football at the club.
The advent of data and its multiple analyses on a large and small scale has revolutionized the world of football. Sevilla FC realized several years ago that a path of differentiation from competitors was opening up. Through its R&D department, the club developed a strategy to stay ahead of rivals. Now, all these advances are reaching the women’s football division of the organization. ‘There were things to improve, and we want to address them with the women’s performance department, using data to enhance the women’s teams and align their resources with those of men’s football,’ analyzes Monchi.
his project launched by Sevilla FC for its women’s academy will represent a qualitative leap in the physical preparation and training methods of the Sevilla female youth players. ‘All the knowledge we have acquired over the years in the R&D department, we want to make it available to the women’s academy and adapt it to their particularities,’ argues José María Cruz Gallardo, head of that department. Currently, the cadet, youth, and senior teams conduct two sessions per week, meticulously collecting data on speed, endurance, strength, and other parameters for subsequent analysis.
The technological infrastructure that Sevilla FC has acquired in recent years enables the implementation of such an ambitious project. ‘The provision of all the technological equipment we have is a means to achieve performance improvements through the analysis of data obtained with non-invasive methods,’ explains Cruz Gallardo. He recalls a reflection on which Sevilla FC bases its commitment to technological innovation: ‘What is not measured cannot be improved, and what is not improved eventually degrades.
The Sports Data Forum returns once again. Sport Data Campus, the Catholic University of San Antonio in Murcia, and Sevilla FC, through its Innovation Center, have been working for months on the organization of this third edition, with the collaboration of Big Data International Campus, Football Data International Forum, and Eniit Innova IT Business School, and the main sponsorship of Hudl. As in previous years, the format will be hybrid, alternating between on-site and remote sessions, although the entire event will be fully streamed. The kickoff will take place at the Ramón Sánchez-Pizjuán Stadium on March 24th with an on-site session featuring the welcome keynote by Víctor Orta, sporting director of Leeds United. Following this, various presentations and roundtable discussions will cover topics such as professional game analysis and the latest trends in Big Data and Artificial Intelligence applied to football. The day will conclude with a closing keynote session by Ramón Rodríguez Verdejo, sporting director of Sevilla FC.
The event will continue over different days and weeks until its definitive conclusion on June 19th. During this time, various themes will be explored, including Big Data and Sports Management, AI applied to Sports, Digital Transformation and Innovation in Football Clubs, Data Ecosystem in Women’s Football, Big Data and Basketball, Big Data and Handball, Technological Entrepreneurship in the Sports Industry, and Professional Elite Analysts. Sessions in English and Portuguese are included, as well as a day dedicated to students. In all these sessions, club professionals will take the lead and share their experiences and knowledge with the students. For more information and registrations, you can visit this link. The club will soon provide information on accessing invitations through its Innovation Center LinkedIn page.
Researchers Juan José González Badillo, Juan Ribas Serna and David Rodríguez Rosell, members of Sevilla FC’s R+D+i Department together with Luis Sánchez Medina, have published a study which clarifies various concepts, theories and principles relating to the objectives, organisation, methodology and evaluation of the effects of strength training, following a detailed and rigorous examination of the existing literature and the results of research carried out by the authors themselves.
The general purpose of this work is to expose, analyse and constructively debate the anomalies present in the current methodology of strength training. Specifically, it deals with the inappropriate and confusing use of terminology, the need to clarify the objectives of strength training, the concept of maximal strength itself, the control and monitoring of the dosage of strength exercises, the existing programming models and the evaluation of the effects of training. The new paradigm involves precise control of the training load, the effort involved for the athlete and the effect of the training. All of this is based on the control of the speed of repetitions during training, which provides the necessary information to know the real loads that induce specific effects in each athlete.
González Badillo, Ribas Serna and Rodríguez Rosell are researchers of recognised prestige and trajectory who are currently integrated in the Department of Research, Development and Innovation of Sevilla FC developing their work in the specialities of Medicine and Sports Sciences.
