The Maccabi Tel Aviv Youth Department has a wide variety of departments whose goals are to promote and streamline the Club’s activities. In an in-depth interview with Dr. Antonio Dello Iaconno, the Yellow & Blue’s Sports Science Department Director, he sheds light on the structure of the department, the programs and the importance of the work that is being done by the staff.
The Sports Science Department includes 5 fitness coaches and 4 analysts who help run the operation of the department with Antonio at its head. His job is to manage the department, to dictate methodological guidelines for training, to build a database that deals with the physical aspects of the department and to give feedback to coaches on the basis of the information available.
The department’s staff examines everything that occurs on the pitch thanks to technological devices such as GPS and video. The staff also collects data into a database that they are managing which allows them to know how to determine the content of each training session.
The ultimate goal is to give the coaches guidelines in order for them to plan and regulate the sessions, to analyze what they are doing on the macro level, when to do certain parts of training during the week and on which day, up to the micro level including methodology, rest periods, training times, the amount of players and the conditions for the actual sessions themselves.
At the same time, the analysts review and manage the video content. They film every match as well as training sessions and they put together individual or team video clips according to the philosophy of the Performance Director Patrick van Leeuwen with the goal of giving the coaches material and video information for team as well as individual meetings. The video content will also be used to analyze the matches according to specifications that were determined in advance and can also look at quantitative and qualitative aspects that occurred during the game so that the positives can be continued to be worked on or to give feedback in areas that need improvement.
Another important part of the department is the rehabilitation of injured players which is done in conjunction with the medical staff headed by Snir Konik.
Any Injured player who needs to return to his squad once he has completed the clinical stage of the physiotherapy passes through the Sports Science Department. They deal primarily with the player’s rehabilitation and having them return to action as strong as possible in order to deal with the pressure that will need to be faced in training sessions with the emphasis on making sure that the injury does not reoccur.
Another new advance has been the cooperation between Maccabi and technological sports startups. The department decided to partner with startups that on one hand want to develop their product while also receiving professional feedback to help improve it as well.
Anything that can be measured, quantified, analyzed and gives a broader picture of what is being done on the pitch is welcome. It helps the department analyze and characterize additional items. Project examples: 1. A system that will test training sessions in combination with optical and accelerometer technology. 2. Project that can characterize technical capabilities. 3. System for predicting injuries. 4. A topic already being discussed in the department is spatial/cognitive orientation training by visual stimulation. Click here to see the cognitive training session in action.
The Sports Science Department is a large department that receives both professional and budgetary support. The data received is vital in improving the Youth Department’s efficiency.
