Statistics, data analysis, players' and coaches' assessment of what is possible and what is not are all being influenced by the video game depictions they study.
Life is quite literally following art. JL
Rory Smith reports in the New York Times:
The developers of FIFA and Pro Evolution Soccer set out to reflect reality. They have succeeded in helping alter it. Ibrahimovic
said he would “often spot solutions in the games that I then
parlayed into real life," Wenger’s
assertion that Messi was a “PlayStation footballer”
was meant more as an explanation than an insult: his conception of what is
possible was forged by fantasy. Pep Guardiola’s vision of soccer stemmed from
computers: his “gentle programming of players” is pure “PlayStation.”
Before his first few appearances as a teenage striker for Arsenal, Alex Iwobi used to cast his eye over the names of the opposition team, trying to identify his direct opponent.
“I’d look at his name,” he said, “and then try to remember how good he was on FIFA.”
For
millions of soccer fans across the world, video games — primarily the
record-high-selling FIFA series from Electronic Arts, but also its rival
series Pro Evolution Soccer and the more cerebral Football Manager —
act as both a gateway drug to soccer and, later, another way of
satisfying an established addiction.
FIFA’s
various iterations alone have sold more than 150 million copies
worldwide, according to Forbes. By some measures, it is the most
successful sports video game franchise in history, even without
including the latest installment, FIFA 17, released last month. Pro
Evolution Soccer has more than 80 million copies in circulation, while
the Football Manager series ranks as one of the best-selling on PC.
Players rank among the most ardent devotees of all three. Andrea Pirlo has proclaimed that “after the wheel, the PlayStation is the best invention of all time.”
Zlatan Ibrahimovic wrote in his autobiography that he “could go 10
hours at a stretch” playing soccer video games early in his career. John
Terry used to host Pro Evolution Soccer get-togethers for his Chelsea
teammates on the eve of each season.Victor Vázquez, a former teammate of
Lionel Messi’s in Barcelona’s youth sides, remembered Messi “playing
for three hours without a break” during marathon tournaments. Messi’s
Barcelona teammate Gerard Piqué, another graduate of the city’s famed
academy, La Masia, said he still played FIFA “while traveling, in the
hotel, with the team.”
And
two years before Manchester United made him the world’s most expensive
player, the French midfielder Paul Pogba was seen playing Football
Manager during the 2014 World Cup. He was managing Chelsea, and had
signed himself.
Like
most of his generation, Arsenal’s Iwobi, 20, grew up with video games.
He played soccer, too, of course, both as part of his formal sporting
education — with a youth team near his family home and then, from age 9,
at the Gunners’ academy — and as part of its informal equivalent, the
technical, intense matches on the five-a-side field in the East London
neighborhood where he grew up.
Photo
Alex Iwobi in the FIFA game.
Both
informed the player Iwobi would become. If his academy coaches refined
his talent, instilling discipline and dedication, he attributes his
close control, for example, to playing in the five-a-side “cage,” where
any mistake is pounced on by “bigger boys who want to bully you off the
ball.”
His
taste for video games, though, should also be credited with playing a
role. As with Pirlo and Nesta, Iwobi’s favorite team in FIFA was, as a
rule, Barcelona — thanks to Ronaldinho, the Brazilian playmaker with the
vivid imagination and the mischievous grin. “He had all these tricks,
things even he wouldn’t try in normal life,” Iwobi said.
He
also had a soft spot for Aiden McGeady, an altogether less remarkable
Irish winger. “He had one turn that I would go out into the garden and
practice,” Iwobi said.
It
was the same with Ronaldinho. Iwobi would spend hours trying to bring
to life the tricks his idol could do only in virtual reality. Mastering
them helped him in the cage, and then in his career.
Soccer
video games have spent much of the last 20 years in an arms race for
authenticity. FIFA and Pro Evolution Soccer study the movements of
players to make their simulations as lifelike as possible; Miles
Jacobson, the creator of Football Manager, sends out early copies of his
game to 1,500 players to beta-test, while “the access we are given to
clubs” means he and his team can incorporate new developments rapidly.
The reaction to them among professionals suggests they are succeeding. Chelsea striker Michy Batshuayi last month complained on Twitter to the producers of FIFA 17
that his passing statistics were not high enough, while Jacobson said
that he regularly had to deal with players — or their agents — asking
for their assessments to be bumped up just a little. The games, they
believe, reflect the real-life sport.
As
Iwobi suggests, however, they increasingly do more than that: They are
not merely representations of the game, but influencers of it. Iwobi is
not the only player who believes that what he does on the field has been
influenced by what he has seen rendered on a screen.
Ibrahimovic
said that he would “often spot solutions in the games that I then
parlayed into real life” as a young player. Mats Hummels, the Bayern
Munich and Germany defender, has suggested that “maybe some people use
what they learn in FIFA when they find themselves on a pitch.”
Wenger’s
assertion several years ago that Messi was a “PlayStation footballer”
was meant more as an explanation than an insult: Messi does things that
seem to belong on a pixelated screen because that is, in part, how he
has learned to see the game. Just like Iwobi, his conception of what is
possible and what is not was forged by fantasy.
Video
games’ impact, though, does not stop there. Pirlo suggested in his
biography that Pep Guardiola’s lionized vision of soccer stemmed from
computers: his “gentle programming of players” is pure “PlayStation,”
Pirlo wrote.
Perhaps
the most significant impact, though, may be away from the field. “Data
is the bedrock of everything we do,” said Duncan Alexander, the head of
British content for the data provider Opta. “It’s behind everything,
from getting an Uber to doing your online shopping.” Increasingly,
soccer is no exception.
Most
elite teams now employ data analysts who provide a raft of metrics for
coaches to digest, much of it based on initial figures from Opta. Slowly
— and secretively — their work is growing ever more sophisticated, and
ever more important to the clubs they advise.
The rise of the
analysts — a seismic shift for soccer, an inherently conservative sport —
may owe a debt to the success of Football Manager. As Alexander
observed, many of the people working for clubs or for external advisers
grew up “in the 1990s, when Football Manager was becoming popular.” Even
if they did not play it, they were at least familiar with the language
it spoke.
“The chronology between the popularity of the game and the use of numbers in soccer,” he said, “is broadly similar.”
Jacobson
has witnessed that firsthand. “There are people working for Champions
League teams who started out working as scouts gathering data for us,”
he said. Several managers regularly get in touch to elicit the
developer’s verdict on possible targets.
Last
year, ProZone, an analysis company, started a scouting program called
Recruiter, combining its own and Football Manager’s treasure troves of
data, to formalize that connection. Other scouting software programs,
including Scout 7 and InStat, provide much more “sophisticated” analysis
than Football Manager, according to Alexander, but their format would
be easily interpreted by anyone who has played the game.
“Fifteen
years ago, nobody was using data,” Jacobson said. “It is amazing, how
prevalent it has become. I would like to think we played some part in
that.”
As
the developers of FIFA and Pro Evolution Soccer did, Jacobson and his
Football Manager team set out to reflect reality. They have succeeded,
instead, in helping alter it.
As the developers of FIFA and Pro Evolution Soccer did, Jacobson and his Football Manager team set out to reflect reality. They have succeeded, instead, in helping alter it.
As a Partner and Co-Founder of Predictiv and PredictivAsia, Jon specializes in management performance and organizational effectiveness for both domestic and international clients. He is an editor and author whose works include Invisible Advantage: How Intangilbles are Driving Business Performance. Learn more...
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