he future stars of Chelsea Football Club are improving their skills with the football clubs brand new AR mobile app. The club’s new Perfect Play application has been created for Chelsea FC’s junior academy players to supplement their training outcomes.
The recent launch is being considered as a solution to up the stakes of digitalised youth training. The app, available to download, uses video tracking to map out a player's space and reviews precise data about their ability and performance. Additionally it offers a range of individual and team challenges for players. The new app is the result of all the efforts put in by the developers and academy staff since 2018.
Head Coach of Chelsea U11s, Sam Page, has stepped into a prominent role with the new app and according to Page, many of the club’s staff have already used the app with the academy players and regards it as an essential part of the club’s home learning setup developed during the recent lockdown period.
In a recent interview with Sky Sports News, Page stated:
"It presented a really exciting opportunity for us with Perfect Play, and we offered the testing version of the app to our academy players from the U9s to U13s as part of their home learning programme. They tested it for us and had it as part of their programme, so we had some really nice feedback and were able to make some refinements off the back of that and moving forward we're really keen for it to be a supplementary part of the programme for the youngest age groups that we only see on a part-time basis."
Page explained:
"Our goal is to remain at the forefront of what's happening in global academy football, we always aspire to be world-leading. Our head of youth development Neil Bath really drives us as coaches to think in a fully-integrated fashion, and about all the technologies that come with that. Perfect Play is a really good example of how as coaches we can think about what technology can do to enhance our coaching practice."
Page admitted his own pride at seeing such a bumper crop of academy graduates, especially when witnessing England midfielder Mount hit the net in the 1-1 home draw with Leicester at the start of the campaign.
Page went on to comment:
"We talk to our players about it now, about the pathway and the expectations that Frank has, and the things he talks to us as academy staff about; the commitment, hard work, dedication, all of those core fundamental skills that we've also tried to embed in the Perfect Play app."
App developer and owner Steve Didd will continue to work with Chelsea on refining an app he believes can help radically alter general sports training.
When asked about the AR technology Didd stated:
"Technology is going to be hugely influential in terms of how people train, and it's something we're hugely excited about delivering within Perfect Play, our goal with the product is to make kids better footballers, and this technology enables us to show them they are getting better, because it captures their performances.”
Didd concluded by saying:
"Kids are very tech savvy now, but this should be extremely intuitive to set up and use and we believe it's going to become an essential part of football training moving forwards. We're taking elite academy methodologies that have been developed over decades, digitising that, and allowing kids to have that same kind of training, that wouldn't be accessible elsewhere. So it's there to help kids improve and gain the edge. We already have a masterclass in the app with Reece James. We're heavily involved with the first-team men and women as well as the academy kids who feature. And we'll be doing more masterclasses with players from both the men's and women's team."
More from
Latest News
category
