Enrico Iodice, Udinese match analyst, was a guest on yesterday evening’s episode of Udinese Tonight.
Here were some of his thoughts:
"The role of a match analyst is to complement the head coach's work. We study everything that happens on the pitch as objectively as possible, specifically how we perform as a team, in order to generate data. This data is shared firstly with the coach, then with the team, and finally the ideas derived from it are put into practice.
When it comes to build-up play, the approach all comes down to how opponents press. There are teams which opt for the man-for-man approach, which is conducive for your team to play more directly. There are also teams which don’t swamp you quite as much, meaning you’re able to take the initiative and decide how to build from the back.
There is a continuous exchange of information among the coaching and technical staff, but the final word comes down to the coach. Luca Gotti is an excellent listener, and he wants us to be very to-the-point. Sometimes we’ll see things differently but he always takes the final decision and we’ll always back what he chooses to do.
As soon as the final whistle goes I'll get down to work. After a match, I need to prepare what we’ll be doing in the following training session. It’s a combination of content for the whole team and also information curated to individual players.
Sport as a whole is embracing specialisation across various contexts, and football is no exception. There are experts who specialise in just one aspect of the game, such as goalkeeping coaches. Yet what’s important to me is allowing individual talent to flourish because that’s the beauty of football.
As far as data is concerned, there are a series of parameters which we have deemed to be the ones to guide our approach to work. These parameters, such as effectiveness in attack, indicate how a team is doing in a specific area. When we identify a parameter in need of improvement we’ll then focus on polishing it. All of this data is generated by specialist software. We focus on some parameters which are important to us as a team but which may not be at other clubs.
Every coach I’ve collaborated with has taught me something new, and the one who I’ve worked best with has been Luca Gotti."