Football giants

Chapter 835 Is This Underestimated?

"Welcome to Stapletwood, guests from afar!"

When Southampton's special reception vehicles, carrying Klaus Michael Kuhn and others, traveled south from London's Wembley Stadium to Southampton's Stapletwood training base, Les Reid greeted them outside the training building.

The British youth training expert, who had just been promoted to Southampton's technical director, was wearing a clean white shirt and a scarlet tie, which looked somewhat dazzling. His slightly bald, chubby head and a pair of glasses made him look very friendly.

Such an affinity can be seen in almost everyone who is engaged in youth training.

"Hello, Mr. Reed, thank you very much for your reception!"

Kuhn and others got out of the car one by one, and went up to shake hands with Les Reed one by one.

"This is what we should do, Mr. Kuhn!" Les Reid looked very polite.

These are the guests that Young Master Huan personally confessed to, so he naturally wants to receive them warmly, and Young Master Huan will come back to invite them to dinner in the evening.

"Let me introduce to you, this is Andris Junker, our director of youth training."

The tall, blond middle-aged man next to him immediately stepped forward and politely shook hands with Kuhn and the others.

"Junker?" Kuhn frowned slightly, "If I remember correctly, you used to be Van Gaal's assistant coach?"

"Yes, I was Luiz's chief assistant coach at Barcelona and Bayern Munich," Juncker said with a smile.

Kuhn nodded, "I am very glad to meet you, Andris, I have heard Ricardo mention you many times."

"Ricardo?" Junker was a little surprised, who is it?

"Ricardo Moniz!"

"Oh, it's him!" Junker suddenly realized.

This time it was just right.

Ricardo Moniz once served as an assistant coach in Hamburg, and later became a full-time coach and became the team's head coach.

"At that time we were planning to renovate the youth academy in Hamburg. I asked Ricardo for his opinion. At that time, he was like we solemnly recommended you. He thought that Barcelona's youth academy could achieve its current glory. Your transformation back then was indispensable. And after you joined Bayern Munich with Van Gaal, you also started to transform Bayern Munich's youth academy."

Speaking of this, Kuhn laughed, "He told me, ask anyone who is familiar with European youth training, and the most famous youth training expert in Europe, Andris Juncker must be ranked in the top three."

"I'm overwhelmed!" Junker smiled modestly.

Alexander Otto and others were also a little shocked. Unexpectedly, this Stapletwood came out by himself, and he was so awesome!
As early as in the car just now, they had already learned that Les Reid of Southampton is also a well-known youth training expert in the UK and even in Europe, but they didn't expect that Stapletwood was hiding a youth training power like Andris Junker.

Oh, I heard that he is the head of the team's youth training, so he should have only arrived in the last year.

There have been rumors in the media before that Southampton is undergoing management reform.

It is reported that Peter Kenyon may leave the team, Ron Gurley will be transferred from the original chief operating officer to the chief executive officer, while Nicola Cortez will still serve as the executive chairman, and Les Reid will serve as the team's technical director.

So, Andris Junker should have come at that time.

"Several, please!" Les Reed smiled and invited everyone into the training building.

The Stapletwood training base is divided into two major training areas, which are dedicated to the first team and used by the youth team. Both are equipped with advanced hardware facilities such as training buildings and indoor training grounds.

Among them, there are two more professional football fields in the training area of ​​the youth team, which are used by the Southampton youth team. One of them is also equipped with a live broadcast and multimedia system, which is specially provided for the youth team to participate in the UEFA Youth League and other venues for live broadcast games.

The two training areas are separated after entering the gate, and only walking is allowed in the middle, and vehicles cannot pass through.

In the middle of the two areas, there are some shared facilities and venues, such as the data analysis and research center, medical and rehabilitation center, and the indoor football stadium that is popular with players.

The first place Kuhn and others visited was the Saints first-team training building.

For this well-known training building in European football, Kuhn and others also visited with a pilgrimage mentality of learning, but because the first team went to London to participate in the Community Shield, the training building was very empty and there were almost no people.

But Kuhn and others were surprised by the hardware facilities of the training building.

Among other things, let's talk about the simplest player's rest room, which is completely completed in accordance with the standards of a five-star hotel.

"Our player's room has just completed a new round of remodeling, completely in accordance with the requirements of sleep expert Nick Littlehalles. Although a lot of money has been invested, the players' response is very good. Therefore, in the next year, we will continue to renovate the rooms in the youth team's training building."

Kuhn, Otto and others were all surprised.

This matter has been reported by the media before, and it is said that more than seven figures have been invested in the renovation cost.

But Southampton has such courage!
After visiting the players' rooms, they came to a gate.

The gate is very ordinary, but what is different is the sign erected at the gate, which reads, "Non-players, don't enter!"

"This is the exclusive area for players reported by many media reporters!"

Alexander Otto was immediately interested, and wanted to open the door to have a look inside, but he couldn't push it open.

"Hey, why is it locked?"

Les Reed smiled and nodded: "Yes, the player-only area was proposed by Master Huan. It is very popular with the players. Except for the players of the first team, no one has the key, and no one is allowed to enter."

"What's in there?" Kuhn also asked with great interest.

Not only him, everyone around showed curious expressions.

Unexpectedly, Les Reed shook his head helplessly and said, "Frankly speaking, I don't know either!"

Everyone burst into sweat immediately.

Even the technical director doesn't know what's inside, it's so mysterious!

"I'm very strange, Mr. Reed!" Kuhn asked curiously: "What if the players discuss something that is not good for the team? Does the club not care?"

Les Reed nodded, "Yes, we won't take care of it."

"why?"

"This is the most basic kind of trust. The players trust us, so they join Southampton and entrust their precious careers to us, so we also fully trust the players."

When Les Reid said this, he changed the topic, "Of course, even if there are players who want to harm the team, there are twenty or thirty players in it, can they all join? If so, then I believe, there must be something really wrong with the club!"

When everyone heard this, they couldn't help nodding.

It is indeed such a truth, isn't it?
Compared with Southampton, the player's career is the most precious.

"Is this Master Huan's idea?" Kuhn asked again.

"Well, yes!" Les Reed nodded.

Kuhn didn't say anything more, just took a deep look at the gate, and followed Les Reed to go elsewhere.

Turning around in the first-team training building, they were all stunned at how much Southampton had invested in their training facilities.

They had only seen some reports from the media and heard about some things before, but after seeing it with their own eyes, they realized that Southampton was so advanced and had such a forward-thinking concept.

But when they left the first-team training building and walked into the data analysis and research center, it was even more surprising.

Different from the empty training building, the office of the Data Analysis and Research Center was brightly lit and everyone was working intensively, and the two leaders were Marcus du Sartoy and Howard Hamilton, who were reported in the newspapers?
These are the two generals of Southampton data analysis!

"I'm sorry, everyone, they are busy preparing the data analysis results of the game that just ended. After the team returns to Southampton, Bielsa will hold an analysis seminar, which will be used at that time, so we can't go in and visit."

Kuhn and others also gave an understanding of this.

But I was surprised in my heart. I didn't expect that just after the game ended, Southampton would analyze the pros and cons.

This is really efficient enough.

"Although there is no way to get in, Hamburg has contacted us before, intending to introduce our data analysis system. Therefore, I can reveal here that many rumors in the outside media are not accurate."

"Inaccurate?" Kuhn looked at Les Reed in surprise.

"Mr. Reed, you mean..."

Les Reed smiled confidently and calmly, "I mean, they underestimated our system."

"What?" Kuhn and the others were shocked.

This system has already been spread by the media to be miraculous. Is this still underestimated?
"In the past four years, our database has completed the accumulation of player data in Europe, and has also initially completed the collection of player data from several other continents such as Asia and South America. I can say that any player you can name can find his data here."

Having said that, Les Reid smiled, "Even, we may be able to know and understand their players better than their coaches."

Kuhn, Otto and the others looked at each other in shock, how could this be possible?
Les Reid received a call from Yang Huan before, and knew that Master Huan meant to deter this group of fan representatives.

Therefore, he was not polite. After saying wait a moment, he nodded to Andris Junker behind him. The latter immediately knocked on the door and walked into the office. After a short while, he turned around and came out again with an extra document in his hand.

Les Reid took the file and looked at it, "This is the data of Cesc Fabregas in the Community Shield game just now, you can take a look."

Kuhn and the others hurriedly took it and opened it, only the first page shocked them all.

In the past, the player-related data they saw in the media and newspapers, and even in the hands of club staff, at most, was the running distance of the players, the number of passes, the success rate, interceptions, steals, passing threats and so on.

If it was a little more, it would be equipped with a pass map and a running heat map.

But all of these, compared with the data analysis of Southampton in front of me, are simply inferior.

"Thanks to the improvement of the broadcasting level in recent years, especially the ultra-high-definition broadcasting, we can get more game data, and generally speaking, the data we get from the broadcaster in each game is often ten times, or even dozens of times, what the fans see, because what we need is everything captured by each shot in nine or 10 minutes."

It has to be said that Kuhn and others were really shocked.

Because they couldn't imagine how much work this would be?

This is too scary, right?
As far as this data analysis ability is concerned, if you look at the football world around the world, oh no, it's the sports world around the world, who can compare?

(End of this chapter)