FIFA to turn Barcelona's Camp Nou stadium into a soccer laboratory
Introduction
To think that football would be associated with science would have been a mirage a decade ago! In today’s world, anything is possible as we are gifted with an opportunity to get a glimpse into the initiative being managed by FIFA of turning Barcelona Football Club's stadium into a soccer laboratory for generations to come.
A full-scale renovation is due to begin in 2020 and be completed in 2024, bringing the iconic venue up to modern standards. The club is also eager for the stadium to be the largest sports experimentation and innovation laboratory in the world.
Photo Credit: FCBarcelona.com
FIFA & FC Barcelona's Camp Nou stadium
The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) is an association governed by Swiss law founded in 1904 and based in Zurich. Its goal, enshrined in its statutes, is the constant improvement of football through organizing international tournaments and sees its role as protecting and developing the game of football for everyone around the world. In sheer effort to raise the bar for international football, FIFA intends to use FC Barcelona’s Camp Nou stadium as a testing laboratory in the field of sports technology.
FC Barcelona is a powerhouse in the La Liga Football league based in Spain and has won numerous trophies since it was established, and is home to some of the best football players in the world namely Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez. The club’s Camp Nou stadium is one of the most famous soccer arenas in the world. It has an official capacity just shy of 100,000 and has played host to some of the most dramatic moments in the sport’s history with most notably the 1999 UEFA Champions League final.
The Camp Nou stadium’s maximum height is 48 meters, and it covers a whole surface area of 55,000 square meters with 250 meters in length and 220 meters in width. In accordance with UEFA stipulations, the playing area has been downsized to 105 meters x 68 meters. With a capacity of 99,354, it is now the biggest stadium in Europe. However, the total capacity has varied over the years owing to different modifications. When it was first opened in 1957, it held 93,053 spectators, which would be increased to 120,000 in 1982 on occasion of the FIFA World Cup. However, the introduction of new regulations outlawing standing areas reduced the stadium’s capacity in the late 1990s to just fewer than 99,000.
Innovation hub origins and soccer laboratory concept
In the 1998-99 season, UEFA recognized the services and facilities at Camp Nou by awarding it a five-star status. In 2010, in line with the new UEFA regulations, this rating was replaced by the new 'Category 4' title which was bestowed to stadiums which fulfill the most demanding requirements with regards to facilities, services, and capacity such as FC Barcelona's stadium.
Photo Credit: FCBarcelona.com
This new era was chosen for the Camp Nou, to make a precision study of monitoring systems used by companies that collect variables during football matches. These tests, carried out in several sessions during the month of October 2019, have focused on indicators of positioning, speed of the players and have been supervised by a team of experts from the University of Victoria in Australia, an entity that collaborates with FIFA on this project.
The measurements were thoroughly done with the help of thirty students from the Barcelona Campus of the National Institute of Physical Education of Catalonia (INEFC). To make them, a 30 x 30-meter quadrilateral was formed on the pitch, with ten cameras on each side, within which the students, with sensors attached to their bodies, made a physical circuit walking, jogging and sprinting, in different directions and with acceleration changes.
The monitoring systems of 13 leading international companies in the tracking sector have been subjected to these tests, including Track160, Catapult, Statsports, and Fitogether. The practical application of this study would be oriented to the analysis of the game for the coaches and the medical teams of the clubs, as well as to extend the quality of the sports broadcasts by providing more information.
The collaboration is being led by the La Liga giants’ Barcelona Innovation Hub, which was formed in 2017 to help incubate innovations that will influence soccer from both a sporting and commercial perspective in the future. It's an initiative that brings together academia, students, start-ups and investors. The aim is to advance FC Barcelona as a technology organization and to share innovations in the field of sports, health and the environment.
Photo Credit: FCBarcelona.com
Barcelona FC said the trials form part of their plans to transform the Nou Camp into a ‘sports experimentation and innovation laboratory,’ with the stadium set to undergo a strong revamp as part of the club’s Espai Barça renovation project. It was also reported in March 2019 that Barcelona FC was looking to raise €100 million to start their own investment fund with a specific focus on trialing new technologies.
FIFA already held similar sessions a few months ago at the Miniestadi. which was home of FC Barcelona’s reserve and female teams until last season. The world governing body FIFA turned the stadium into a testbed for monitoring systems that can collect data during games. Specifically, the trials focused on the positioning and speed of players.
Performing them now at the Camp Nou has allowed researchers to step forward and validate the tracking systems from much larger stands, similar to those in the most important stadiums in the world, and with more variety of spaces to test the radio frequency devices.
“The collaboration is being led by the La Liga giants’ Barcelona Innovation Hub, which was formed in 2017 to help incubate innovations that will influence soccer from both a sporting and commercial perspective in the future. It’s an initiative that brings together academia, students, start-ups and investors. The aim is to advance FC Barcelona as a technology organization and to share innovations in the field of sports, health and the environment.”
In 2017, it launched the “Barcelona innovation Hub,” and the hub forms part of the “More than a club” mantra at Barcelona, which is viewed as a symbol of Catalonian identity combined with a global brand. Barcelona president Josep Maria Bartomeu at the launch of the hub in 2017 explicitly stated that the club intends to add more value to the brand FC Barcelona which is owned by 150 000 members. “We are and we want to keep being more than a club. We had to generate a positive impact on society that goes beyond sport.”
With this new experience, the Barça Innovation Hub keeps the door open to the football and sports technology industry and consolidates the club's facilities as a testing space, with the aim of turning FC Barcelona into the largest sports experimentation and innovation laboratory in the world.
Lionel Messi of FC Barcelona celebrates scoring his team's third goal with teammates Luis Suarez and Antoine Griezmann during the La Liga match between FC Barcelona and Deportivo Alaves at Camp Nou on December 21, 2019 in Barcelona, Spain.
(Dec. 20, 2019 - Source: Getty Images Europe)
FIFA altered its regulations in 2015 to allow for wearable technology during matches and provided all 32 nations at the last World Cup with access to a tablet-based Electronic Performance and Tracking System (EPTS). FIFA and Barcelona announced in November 2018 that they were teaming up to help clubs around the world better monitor their player data. Together they launched the Electronic Performance and Tracking Systems (EPTS), which allows clubs to exchange and compare information in a unified and standardized fashion.
EPTS delivered teams with match footage, alongside stats such as player positioning data, passing, pressing, speed and tackles, and was compatible with both camera and wearable-based systems. In the trials at the Camp Nou, the tracking systems of 12 different vendors were tested to determine their suitability.
It is hoped that more effective data tracking will help coaches with match preparation, allow for more effective player treatment, and to provide more insight to broadcasters. The initiative is noble and it will give football a better picture.
Parting word
Barcelona isn’t the only soccer club putting technology at the heart of its strategy as rumors say that Manchester City has partnered with SAP to transform its on and off-pitch operations. In the future, it is inevitable that other big clubs such as Real Madrid, Paris Saint-German and Bayern Munich are likely to join this auspicious initiative to give the game of football a major upswing in performance, preparations and the actual play for players.