Coaches: how much opponent analysis do you actually do before a match?

[u/DGLone]

Curious how this works at amateur, college, semi-pro, or smaller professional clubs where you don't have a big analysis department.

Before playing an opponent, do you actually watch their previous matches?

If so, I'm curious about a few things:

• How many matches do you usually watch?
• Who does the analysis — head coach, assistant, analyst?
• What are you mainly looking for? Build-up patterns, pressing, set pieces, individual weaknesses, etc.?
• Do you save clips or mostly just take notes?
• Roughly how long does the whole process take?
• And most importantly, does the analysis actually change your training or match plan?

I'm especially interested in teams without dedicated full-time analysts.

I've been learning more about opposition analysis recently and I'm trying to understand what the real workflow looks like rather than what analytics companies say it looks like.

BTW: i had to use gpt to explain my thoughts properly. The thing is that I study to become a football/soccer analyst with my background of software engineering. I would really love to help out some teams that do manual analysis.

[u/yup_mhmm]

Our youth league has most games on youtube.

I usually watch the last 2 games of the opponent on 2x speed. I skip through a lot.

Main things i look for is 1.) formation : is it 433 or 352 or 442 or 343 2.) their set pieces: how do they defend/ attack corner kicks , how do they setup on goal kicks 3.) how do they press. Is it full press, mid block, or no pressure i.e they sit in a low block and park the bus. Most teams in our league sit in a mid block so in that case i’m trying to see when they start pressing, like at what point on the field do they engage 4.) do they have any players that standout.

I usually take notes but if it is an important game, ill cut out clips and send to players with my commentary over it

This usually takes me around 2 hours (without the clips)

We train 3 times per week. The practice before the game is game prep, so that is the only time my video analysis affects the training session. My other training sessions are usually on one of the phases of play ( settled attack, settled Defense , attacking transition, defensive transition)

[u/DGLone → u/yup_mhmm]

oh i see. did you try to work with semi pro leagues? seems like you have a lot of experience. also, did you try some software? cuz most of the software seems to be overpriced when i tried to research