Following their recent participation in the Aspire Academy Global Summit 2022 (AAGS) in Doha, the FIFA Global Football Development Department, led by FIFA’s Chief of Global Football Development Arsene Wenger, said that the first Middle East and Arab World Cup promises to have incredible matches and outstanding analysis for fans viewing experience.
With 44 days until the start of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022, the world’s finest players are looking to peak at the right moment as they prepare to showcase their skills on football’s grandest stage.
Qatar 2022, like every FIFA-run tournament, will be the subject of an in-depth technical, tactical, and physical analysis designed to investigate the game’s progress and evolution, according to FIFA. The team will be present at every game of the tournament to evaluate individual player performances as well as how each team implements their tactical strategy. The analysis produced during the tournament will be freely accessible on the FIFA Training Centre in a variety of formats, including interviews, podcasts, analysis shows, and match analysis articles.
“The primary aim is to improve the understanding of the game worldwide, but we also want to use data analysis and the observations of technical experts to try to enhance the overall viewing experience for the fans,” said Wenger during a discussion on the impact of football data.
“Because today, fans want to be informed. Everybody always has opinions, and I’m sure that this demand will increase, and we have an outstanding opportunity here, which we’ll demonstrate during the World Cup, to get fans to play more of a part in competitions.”
FIFA said that these experts will have access to advanced technological tools and football datasets such as Enhanced Football Intelligence and FIFA Football Language. At the World Cup, FIFA will have a team of football analysts collecting an Enhanced Football Dataset on every single player and team, with one football analyst coding one player for the entire match, providing an unprecedented level of new insights to all teams. The TSG’s data-driven observations will be extremely valuable not only to the participating teams and their own analysts, but also to the players themselves, thanks to the FIFA Player App, which will be available in Qatar 2022, and even to the fans.
The TSG, whose exact composition and duties will be revealed in the coming weeks, will include some of football’s biggest names, including Jurgen Klinsmann, a World Cup winner with Germany in 1990, Nigeria’s Sunday Oliseh, who has appeared in two World Cups, and Pascal Zuberbuhler, a former Switzerland goalkeeper who is now FIFA’s Senior Football Expert.
And fans will likely come out in force to follow the event around the world, particularly in the 32 nations that will be represented in Qatar. Wenger is hopeful that, in time, each qualified country will be able to kick off a World Cup with the serious ambition of emerging victorious from the tournament.
“Since Uruguay lifted the trophy, no nation with fewer than 40 million inhabitants has won the World Cup,” he noted.
“Croatia came close, and they’re a great role model that smaller nations can draw inspiration from.
“A national team is always where the identity of the people of its country can be found. The World Cup is so strong because it’s a place where everybody can identify with their team, and it rewards the quality of football-related policies within countries. That’s the reason why we’re keen to develop football all over the globe, to give everybody a fighting chance.”
By Ikoli Victor
