Aspire in the World Fellows Book - 2022

19 18 a star, is unknown. So, let’s try to know him when he’s unknown and get better players cheaper, and at an earlier age. That was one of the reasons and overall, we wanted as well to know all the players in the world. We analyzed the competitions in Europe, in the five best leagues. Basically, we have always lived in a world of small margins and we have always to be a step ahead of everybody else. Chris Loxton: One of the interesting things you’ve told me about before is in Arsenal you used to analyze the positioning and the age of the players to inform when you needed to make recruitments. Arsène Wenger: Yes, every position in a team has a peak at a certain age. For example, on the flanks, you ‘die’ earlier because the high intensity work is very high. You are a 400-meter runner and you need absolute, full power. You ‘die’ earlier at 29 or 30. Contrary, we see many examples now with central strikers. They last much longer because of experience and efficiency, we see the best goal scorers now in the world are 33, 34, 35. This was not common at all in our mind, our thought was a striker has to be 24, 25. No, the central strikers last much longer. But on the flanks, it’s the most difficult physical position. So, we tried to sell the players just before the peak of the age. Chris Loxton: This was obviously your philosophy in the club when you needed to buy players and replace certain players, but now you’re at FIFA, what have you implemented to allow us to take a more global view of world football? Arsène Wenger: Football is always evolving and it’s permanently moving. The strikers create a problem for the defenders, the defenders respond, and the strikers find a new problem for the defenders, and they respond again. So, this evolution, we wanted to analyze it and explain it, because we do not necessarily know more than you, but we want to share this knowledge with everybody. During the competition, we share the knowledge with the people who compete, and we make this information available four hours after every game to all the technical people. We’ll have some examples later on, and we want to share it with the media and with the fans as well. Chris Loxton: Our main toolbox is what we call the FIFA football language. It is a blueprint for how we want to analyze football moving forward. Tell us why this is different to data that’s been available previously. Arsène Wenger: We have created the football language. We had long debates about that because we wanted to collect our own data and wanted to create an understandable language for everybody. We wanted to go a step further than just analyzing what’s happening on the ball, we want to also analyze what’s happening off the ball. For example, you have ‘offers to receive’. That means the movement off the ball for the players. Offers to receive behind the defensive line is the most threatening offer. Overall, in our analysis, we have a lot of what’s happening off the ball. Chris Loxton: In our definitions, in our blueprint, to make an offer to receive is one of three things. It is either a hand signal, a change in body shape to give a passing option, or the run. Arsène Wenger: A good player shows where he wants the ball, for example he might make a little curve on his run before. That’s another offer to receive. And we always have the unit. A unit is at least two players, unit one, unit two, unit three. The key is we collect that piece of information even if the player does not receive the ball. You can offer to receive 50 times but get the ball only 30 times. That still shows that you’re active in wanting the ball. Chris Loxton: One of the key elements is we’re not just looking at the events players make, we want to give the football context. So where in relation to the opposition team shape are these actions happening? We obviously have in possession metrics, we now look at the out of possession metrics, one of which is pushing on which includes the circle of freedom. Arsène Wenger: Pushing on basically is an anticipation of the player who defends. It’s not pressure, it’s reducing the solution of the player who he thinks will get the ball. For example, a player can make the run when the ball is with an attacker to close and reduce solutions to play the ball. That’s what we call pushing on. It’s not pressing, it’s anticipating the movement of the ball and reducing the solution of the player who will get the ball. Chris Loxton: The subtle difference is when they close the space of the player that has the ball. We call this pressing. Arsène Wenger: Once a player has the ball and he goes to win the ball back, that’s what we call pressure. That’s the football language, it’s just to explain the differences. Chris Loxton: The key is the definitions are all available on the FIFA training center, the online academy. So why is off the ball movement so important? Arsène Wenger: I feel it’s an important ingredient that has not been analyzed until today. Intelligent players create solutions by movement of the ball and by creating solutions. I believe as well that with pressing today, the speed of availability of a player becomes absolutely vital and the speed of availability is decided by his movement off the ball. Chris Loxton: When we built the FIFA football language, it took us around two years to finalize this. I remember sitting in your office for many hours trying to figure out how we want to define a cross, but we won’t talk about that today, we don’t have enough time. Arsène Wenger: We have David Beckham here. He could explain what a cross is or not.