Cape Town City FC advancing with Catapult Vector
Leading South African Premier League Football team, Cape Town City FC, have been looking at how they can upgrade their athlete monitoring infrastructure so they can have access to more accurate objective data to track the players, speed up reporting, and be more proactive in training.
To achieve this Cape Town City FC signed up with Catapult, the global performance technology leader in elite sports, as their Official Athlete Monitoring Partner. The collaboration will cover the next three seasons and improve and streamline performance tracking capabilities across all teams at the club.
→ Click here to learn more about Catapult wearable technology
As part of this collaboration, Cape Town City FC will use the Vector Live system, giving the Blue and Gold Army coaches metrics they can use to manipulate the training variables to get the most out of the players while trying to reduce the risk of player overload and injuries. Learn more by watching the video below:
Developing players “like never before”
Lee Miles, Head of Sports Science at Cape Town City FC wanted to have an athlete monitoring system that would provide accurate objective data so he could use it to monitor player loads, get the players to perform at their peak, recover adequately and perform again.
“The rapid developments in technology are enabling coaches to improve the development of their athletes like never before,” said Cape Town City FC Head of Sports Science, Lee Miles.
“Our partnership with Catapult will increase access to these technologies and further our mission to raise the standard of the game in South Africa.
“Given Catapult’s strong catalogue of global customers, we knew the technology would have a significant impact on optimizing our athletes’ performance. We have developed a strong ongoing relationship with Catapult and look forward to more seasons of working together.”
Cape Town City FC access accurate objective data
With Catapult Vector athlete data, the Cape Town City coaches will be able to make objective decisions to prepare athletes for the demands of elite football by managing player workload and monitoring their individual development with objective metrics like speed, acceleration, and heart rate.
As the leading athlete monitoring system in sports, the Vector SaaS technology provides teams with powerful athlete performance data allowing staff to make objective decisions about athletes, maximize their performance, and avoid costly injuries.
Curt Taylor, Sales Director at Catapult, said: “We are delighted to be supporting Cape Town City FC as they take the important step of improving their Strength & Conditioning infrastructure. Our relationship with Cape Town City FC further emphasizes our ability to improve sports teams’ capabilities on the continent of Africa. We look forward to working even closer with Head Coach Eric Tinkler and his team to help them meet the demands of elite football.”
The Vector solution uses both Global Positioning System (GPS) and Local Positioning System (LPS) technologies so athletes can move seamlessly between indoor and outdoor environments without disruption. Catapult athlete monitoring has the highest standards for accuracy, reliability, and efficiency to empower critical decisions about player performance, risk of injuries, and return to play.
–> Click here to learn more about Live Athlete Monitoring with Vector.
Unleashing the potential of every athlete with DreamClub 100
In addition to its deep experience with the world’s most elite leagues, Catapult also is committed to unleashing the potential of every athlete on Earth and will support the local youth program, DreamClub 100.
DreamClub 100 is the widest-reaching youth community development initiative in South African football, providing education access and support to 100 of the Western Cape’s top community youth football clubs.
Cape Town City officially partners with 100 of the Western Cape’s top community youth football clubs providing much needed expertise to these clubs, SAFA coaching licensing for their coaches, elite training programs for their players, as well as kit and equipment – all empowering and giving back to the community clubs that are integral to the regions football ecosystem.
The key feature of the annual program calendar is the end-of-season under-16 DreamClub 100 Tournament, where the best aspiring amateur footballers are selected to join Cape Town City’s Academy. The DreamClub 100 project presents opportunities for football clubs to exhibit their talent to be scouted for greater possibilities. The programme gives youth athletes the chance to be seen with numerous attendees going on to become professional athletes off the back of the program.
—> View this video to learn more about DreamClub 100:
Champions Powered by Vector
Recently, Europe’s Eintracht Frankfurt Football Club became the first German team to win the UEFA Cup/Europa League since the 1996-97 season. This historic season is the first season in which Eintracht Frankfurt have been using both Performance Data and Video solutions from Catapult. With access to athlete performance data, event data and video, the club were able to uncover new analytical insights.
Catapult Vector enables Frankfurt to link all physical data with their philosophy and allows them to evaluate the player performances in accordance with their profile to understand what the match demands for training and games is, subsequently tailoring the training programme to fit. Catapult puts Eintracht Frankfurt in the best possible position to develop its athletes and be competitive with the elite European football teams.
“Football is a coach-driven sport … but now we can detect the style of play and profile our players, which is crucial for key performance processes, such as return-to-play,” said Andreas Beck, Head of Physical Performance, Prevention and Rehabilitation.
–> Click here to read more about Eintracht Frankfurt.
How Chelsea FC is reaping the rewards from adding context to performance data
The analysis of elite and aspiring academy football players is a multifactorial process that includes the collection, evaluation, and communication of data.
Jack Christopher and Elliott Axtell, the club’s Head of Academy Sports Science and Physical Fitness and U23 Lead Athletic Development Coach respectively shared their top 5 sports performance predictions for technology, analysis processes, and practitioners:
- Contextualized performance insights
- Measuring physical profiles and their influence on technical performance
- Assessing movement strategy on-pitch
- Fitness testing using tracking data
- Improving the real-time analysis experience is the future of team analysis
–> Click here to read more about Chelsea FC.