[kictanet] Germany scours university data for tips to beat Brazil, coach says

[S.M. Muraya]

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http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN0FC1I620140707?irpc=932

Germany scours university data for tips to beat Brazil, coach says

Mon, Jul 07 11:02 AM EDT
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By Erik Kirschbaum

SANTO ANDRE Brazil (Reuters) - That no European team has won any of the
previous six World Cups in Latin America is not a daunting prospect for
Germany as they head into Tuesday's World Cup semi-final against hosts
Brazil, according to assistant coach Hansi Flick.

Three-times World Cup winners Germany are confident that two years of
meticulous university research combined with their own scouting and
preparations for the conditions will give them an edge against five-times
winners Brazil on their home turf.

“We’re very, very well-prepared and we’re looking forward to playing
Brazil,” Flick told reporters when asked about how Germany planned to ended
the dominance of Latin American teams when playing in their own region.

“We’ve been working on this project for the last two years and our entire
system has been built up for that.”

Germany are undefeated in Brazil but haven't had to face a Latin American
team yet: their four wins were against Portugal, the United States, Algeria
and France with a draw against Ghana.

Major European rivals such as Spain, Italy and England have already been
beaten or knocked out by South American teams.

Flick said to get ready for South American teams Germany have benefited
from a giant data base put together by a team of about 50 students at
Cologne’s sport university over the last two years.

That information, combined with scouting reports, has been used for
detailed analyses of Brazil and their players.

“The sports students in Cologne have been studying in great detail our
opponent and put every play they’ve run, every newspaper article on them,
and everything about them out there under the microscope and made all that
data available to us,” Flick said at Germany’s base camp on the Atlantic
coast in Northeastern Brazil.

“We’ve got this enormous data base to draw upon and, together with our
scouts, we’re able to take a close look at our opponent and make our plans
for the match. It’s a project we’ve been working on intensively for the
last two years. We’ve been able to cull some very high quality information
from all the data from the students. It’s very much helped us prepare.”

Germany have been turning to the student researchers at the Deutsche
Sporthochschule Koeln increasingly over the last decade. Former Germany
coach Juergen Klinsmann first began tapping the data accumulated by the
students, most of whom are soccer enthusiasts and thrilled to be working on
a project that could possibly help, even in a small way, to win the World
Cup.

While the students are sworn to secrecy about their intelligence gathering,
their Professor Juergen Buschmann headed the project has been quoted in
German newspapers saying the students use an eclectic variety of sources to
chronicle such things as how players react in pressure situations, what are
their preferred routes, how do they react when fouled, what gets under skin
and how do they sprint for the ball?

He said the one trend that he was at liberty to reveal was that top teams
change their tactics frequently but provided no further details - not
surprising but tantalizing nevertheless.

The intelligence has come into special focus for the World Cup in Brazil in
part because Germany has never won here on the continent with their three
World Cup titles won in Switzerland (1954), West Germany (1974) and Italy
(1990).

(Reporting By Erik Kirschbaum, Editing by Nigel Hunt)
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