VfL Wolfsburg to become first club to equip women's and junior teams with same sports analytics setup as men's pros
Live player tracking is now also used in women’s and youth football. German Bundesliga football club VfL Wolfsburg is investing in the latest real-time tracking technology from KINEXON. Beginning in the 2021/2022 season, all teams from women’s and men’s professional to the U14 junior team are equipped with the latest GNSS-based KINEXON PERFORM live tracking and analysis solution.
This makes VfL Wolfsburg the first football club whose coaching and analyst team can access seamless real-time performance data of all players from anywhere. In this way, it will be possible for the first time to analyze the load and performance of all teams in a uniform data-based manner and to compensate for differences in performance in a targeted manner, too.
After the successful use of KINEXON technology last season, VfL Wolfsburg is now taking the next step. The “Wolves” will be the first club in the world to use live-tracking-based performance analysis from KINEXON not only for the men’s professional team, but also for the women’s team and for all youth teams from U14 onwards.
Coaches can also evaluate performance data live remotely
Wolfsburg’s work with the Munich-based company KINEXON and its technology already began in the 2021 pre-season and offers the athletics coaches and performance diagnostics team an exclusive advantage. Thanks to mobile, automated live data transmission, they can evaluate performance data of all players from anywhere, i.e. also remotely.
The objective of the coaches is to obtain complete and scientifically comparable performance data of all players. In this way, benchmarks can be defined for specific age groups and individualized stress levels can be controlled. In addition, the team can identify and react more quickly to differences in performance.
VfL Wolfsburg sets new benchmark in club football
With this step, VfL Wolfsburg is acting as an international innovation driver. More than 190 players will wear the latest KINEXON sensors in training, providing the coaching and analyst team with hundreds of performance data in real time.
In addition to a seamless performance data analysis across all teams and age groups, there is another advantage for VfL, which Maximilian Schmidt, CRO at KINEXON Sports & Media, explains:
“No matter whether individual junior players in Wolfsburg are working special shifts with athletic trainers or the professionals are reeling off their individual training programme one by one on holiday. Detailed data on workload, performance, development and even match data can be analyzed centrally in our software without manual, time-consuming uploads and downloads.”
"Uniform data collection across all grades"
For VfL Wolfsburg, the large-scale use of state-of-the-art tracking analysis technology is a central component of its extensive infrastructure modernisation. All grades are to benefit. VfL athletics coach Christoph Tebel on this:
“KINEXON technology provides us with uniform performance indicators for all playing positions and age groups. This allows us to accompany our players in the athletics area in the best possible way on their way from the academy to the pros and to meet the requirements of the respective age level individually.”
Next-level tracking tech arrives in women's and youth football
In the past ten years, the number of KINEXON users has grown rapidly to over 400 international teams. After innovation-driving clubs in the men’s professional sector invested in the trend-setting technology, live-data-based training control is now also increasingly being used in the women’s and youth sector.
“In future, not every team will need its own data analyst to use the technology. Handing out sensors and switching them on is enough. This can be done by anyone.”
Christoph Tebel, who heads the athletics team at VfL, adds:
“The fact that all our data collection is now done via KINEXON — and thus via a central provider — also simplifies and speeds up some internal processes and work steps.”