How Dutch Champions Feyenoord Set New Standard for Monitoring Goalkeepers
Feyenoord recently secured their 16th Eredivisie league title in the 2022-2023 season. Their remarkable achievement included an unbeaten streak of 24 games, the longest among Europe’s top 7 leagues. Since September 2022, Feyenoord hasn’t lost a league game and managed an impressive 13 clean sheets on their path to claiming their first Eredivisie title in 6 years.
We had the opportunity to delve into Feyenoord’s training ground to uncover how the club utilizes cutting-edge technology to monitor and enhance the performance their goalkeepers in training. Feyenoord are using Catapult’s Goalkeeper-Specific Technology to monitor their and improve goalkeeper performance.
The technology leverages the inertial sensors within a GPS device to deliver unique, specific metrics that measure the volume and intensity of a goalkeeper’s actions.
Ruben Peeters, Feyenoord’s Head of Performance, explained to us how they came up with a model which is applicable in every team based on training principles to support the goalkeeper coach in planning the training load of the session.
The new standard to monitor goalkeepers
Catapult’s Goalkeeper-Specific Technology empowers critical decisions around performance, risk, and return to play for goalkeepers.
Feyenoord has been using Catapult devices to collect player-specific data, helping the coaches and performance staff prepare for the demands of games and training by managing the goalkeeper workloads and monitoring their individual development.
“To make them fit and fresh on game day, it is important to plan the high, medium and low load days in a week, planning based on external load we are using IMA [inertial movement analysis] which gives a nice overview of the total movement load of a goalkeeper during a session,” said said Ruben Peeters, Head of Performance.
By cutting specific drills during a session and creating a drill library we are able to plan it prospectively. Every external training load we connect with the internal load – using RPE – to find the optimal benchmarks to create the optimal training outcome.”
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Catapult’s Goalkeeper-Specific Technology enables Feyenoord to evaluate the player performances in accordance with their profile to understand what the load demands for training and games is, subsequently tailoring the training programme to fit.
“Load monitoring is just a part of the puzzle to make the best out of the GK approach. To make them robust, injury free and fit for every game we have a fantastic medical and performance team that works with a 360 approach to make this happen”, said Peeters.
By harnessing the power of data, coaches and players can gain a deeper understanding of their performance, teams are now able to make data-driven decisions, and achieve success on the field whether they are an outfield player or a goalkeeper.
Catapult’s Innovations Shortlisted in Industry Awards
Catapult have been shortlisted amongst prestigious sports technology and innovation companies for the 2023 Sports Technology Awards’ Shortlist in the Best Tech for Data and Analytics category.
The aware recognises the recently released solution that integrates wearable technology with video to provide coaches with contextualized performance insights. The integrated solution was an industry-defining moment, since for the first time athlete performance data from Catapult’s Vector wearable devices syncs with MatchTracker, the most powerful video analysis application for top-tier teams.
Learn more about how every physical metric is connected to video footage, viewable at every game moment :