Following your team to new extremes

Premiership managers use it to keep a close eye on their multi-million pound players, and it’s helped the likes of Chelsea and Arsenal add to their silverware. The tracking technology which gives leading clubs their extra edge is now being refined by Leeds computer scientists.

Sports performance analysts ProZone has teamed up with Leeds computer vision researchers to enhance software which helps managers including Arsene Wenger and Jose Mourinho plan tactics and develop their training to suit players strengths and weaknesses.

“We applied our advanced image understanding knowledge to a successful pilot project which automatically tracked players,” said Dr Chris Needham from the school of computing. “We’re now taking the project a step further to refine the system ready for kick-off next season.”

The software allows the positions of the footballers to be tracked from a number of views through video sequences, by modelling the ‘background’ and picking out areas where the colours change rapidly – the players – as ‘foreground’. This system is much faster than existing tracking techniques because it requires minimal manual intervention from ProZone.

Managers are given statistics – including how fast a player moves, who passes to whom and where each player is on the pitch at any point in the match.

Dr Derek Magee from the school of computing feels this work has great future potential: “I am looking forward to continuing our partnership with ProZone,” he said. “The company is also funding a project relating to behaviour modelling and indexing of team sports, which is an exciting new research area and could help the football managers of the future simulate the potential tactics of their opposition.”

For more information about the technology behind the system see Dr Needham's website.

Photo: Tracking team (l-r) – Dan Hart, Chris Needham and Derek Magee