The software shared by Xavi and Emery
a software developed by the Spanish company Kognia that is capable of automatically detecting key tactical situations in soccer.
The situation
Xavi Hernandez, coach of Barcelona, and Unai Emery, of Villarreal, share a video analyst. He is not a person. It is a software developed by the Spanish company Kognia that is capable of automatically detecting key tactical situations in soccer. Barcelona’s own coach, Iker Casillas and Joan Vilà, one of the fathers of ‘La Masia’, appear among the partners of a project that in 2022 plans to close its fourth round of investment. The tool automates the process of video editing and analysis of game concepts, being able to detect more than 200 static situations structured by player, line and team. Tactical dispositions from how a striker traces breaking unchecks or the splitting of a lateral in the band. This is the third year of development of a technology whose seed began to be cultivated in 2008. It was in a student flat in the Sants neighborhood of Barcelona, where Maurici López-Felip, at that time a student of Physical Activity Sciences and Sport, he earned extra money editing video analysis that Joan Vilà used so that footballers like Carles Puyol, among others, could improve tactically.
Important details
“You had to cut the moment, make it shorter or longer depending on what the player wanted, download the video, use another tool to do the painting… it was an inefficient process and I realized that it didn’t make sense,” he explains, current CEO of the company. This football fan crossed the pond thanks to a scholarship to study in the United States, where he completed his studies in Illinois and received a doctorate from the University of Connecticut. They were key years. ” It was clear to me that football could not be explained solely by physical concepts,” remarks Maurici López-Felip . It was precisely in the United States where he met Henry Harrison in 2015, the company’s current chief technology officer, who with his computational knowledge helped him finish shaping the idea.