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Interview with Graham Bates

Interview with Graham Bates

We are happy to present to you the interview we did with the Head Coach GEPS20 of Girls & Women’s Football Club, Teacher, former CEO Economic/Environ/Edu NGOs, and a supporter of Austria Wien/Leicester City/First Vienna – Graham Bates.

In this interview, Mr. Bates talks about women’s football culture in Austria, the biggest differences between women’s and men’s teams, and how he sees the future of Austria’s football.

 

Where do you see the Austrian women’s game in the next few years?

  • Growing. It’s definitely growing, and we are gonna see, especially after the Euros next year, we will see another injection of enthusiasm. Question is whether the infrastructure is gonna keep up enough to give those girls the opportunity.

In your opinion, what is the big difference between the women’s and men’s football in Austria?

  • Pitches! The men have all the pitches, men have all the clubs, ehm but that’s history… Men stole football from women originally…The fifty-year ban came as much as anything because the women’s game was more popular or just as popular as the men’s and it threatened the men’s football clubs. In England, the FA banned women’s football and it kicked off across the rest. And we still have the resource issue. If there was as many spaces for girls as boys over a short period of time those spaces would be filled. But if you follow this traditional model, there will never be enough girls to justify filling the pitches, you have to do it the other way around.

What are you hoping will change in the next few years?

  • Parent attitude! Parents need to understand that when their girls play football, they are not gonna suddenly be a superstar overnight, yeah. Girls have traditionally, in most cases, been kicking the ball. But you get a girl playing football when she’s young, and give her a few years of proper training, she’ll be just as good technically as any boy, uhm, and she’ll have more fun with it. Because at the end of the day, I’ve trained boys and I’ve trained boys, most boys want to be Messi or Ronaldo, most girls want to play football.
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WIENER SPORT CLUB Partnership Announcement

WIENER SPORT CLUB Partnership Announcement

zone14 and Wiener Sport-Club are partners! The first men's team plays in the Austrian Regionalliga East. We are looking forward to working with the club and helping them take their game to the next level.

The zone14 system saves us hours of video analysis week after week. In the past, we only had the ball-focused TV picture. This was often not useful for tactical analysis because of the zoom. With the zone14 system, the entire pitch is recorded over 90 minutes and I can take a close look at every player in every situation. Video and data analysis are becoming more and more important in amateur sport and for us, zone14 and its system are indispensable.
Robert WeinstablWiener Sport Club - Head Coach
Robert Weinstabl
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TSU HAFNERBACH Partnership Announcement

TSU HAFNERBACH Partnership Announcement

We are pleased to announce that we have entered into a partnership with TSU Hafnerbach. The club's first team plays in the 2nd Austrian Traistental League. We are happy to support them in the upcoming season and to professionalise their club.

In the meantime, work in the amateur sector has become increasingly professional and the number of sessions, even in the lowest classes, has increased to up to 4 per week (including matches). Better and better educated coaches meet better and better educated players. Nevertheless, modern aids such as video analysis are almost completely dispensed with. The question why, this is so is quickly answered: there is not enough time. Since we started working with zone14, this issue has been solved. Thanks to zone14, we now have a tool that allows us to analyse the most important scenes within a few minutes and draw the necessary conclusions.
Thomas GstöttenmayrTSU Hafnerbach
Thomas Gstöttenmayr
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USC MARKERSDORF Partnership Announcement

USC MARKERSDORF Partnership Announcement

Announcement! We have entered into a partnership with USC Markersdorf. Their first team plays in the 1. Klasse West/Mitte. We look forward to learning and developing with them and giving them the opportunity to reach their full potential.

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SV FREISTADT Partnership Announcement

SV FREISTADT Partnership Announcement

zone14 has entered into a partnership with SV Freistadt. The first team plays in the Austrian District League North. We are happy to support the club and help them reach their goals and fight their way to the top.

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Union Neumarkt Partnership Announcement

Union Neumarkt Partnership Announcement

We are pleased to announce our partnership with Union Neumarkt. The men's team plays in the second-tier Ypsertal League in Austria. zone14 and Union Neumarkt hope for a successful collaboration to professionalise the club and develop the team.

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Austria Vienna Partnership Announcement

Austria Vienna Partnership Announcement

We are very pleased to announce the partnership between zone14 and FK Austria Vienna. Austria Vienna plays in the highest Austrian league and is one of the oldest and most successful teams in the history of Austrian football. FK Austria Vienna has won the most trophies of all Austrian clubs and is one of only two teams that have never been relegated from the highest division.

In order to make professional video analysis possible for everyone, we need partners from the lowest to the highest leagues. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all those involved at FK Austria Vienna with whom we work at zone14 REPLAY.

zone14 is an important investment in the future for us. The super-dynamic team responds extremely precisely to our idea of playing football and provides us with insights that we didn't have before. Football video analysis and data analysis are a topic for the future. zone14 brings a great deal of expertise in the area of automation and data processing and, thanks to machine learning, the work of analysts and sports scientists will continue to be made easier in the future.
Christian PuchingerHead of Sports Science | FK Austria Vienna (Bundesliga AT)
Christian Puchinger
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"Der Standard" Article - zone14

"Der Standard" Article - zone14

Viennese start-up Zone14 brings artificial intelligence to amateur football

Football without video analysis is no longer imaginable these days. The young company Zone14 wants to make it easier for amateurs to access the valuable data.

Laptop coaches or going by gut feeling - for a long time there was only either-or in football. Without a laptop, i.e. video analysis and data processing, nothing works in modern football. 22 people run for 90 minutes, so good analyses are correspondingly time-consuming and cost-intensive. Professional clubs have the budget to buy in data, but in amateur football, the situation is usually different. There is still a lot of manual work here.

The Viennese start-up Zone14 recently launched a system called Replay, which also makes this material relatively easily accessible to amateur teams with the help of artificial intelligence.

The football camera system

How does it work? The system consists of two cameras and is easy to install yourself. Via a box connected to the internet, the recorded videos are directly uploaded to a cloud where they are processed and available to the club the next day. Games and training sessions can then be analysed online in a separate program.

Since this year, Zone14 analyses the matches of the Wiener Sportklub. Here the Dornbachers defeated Wiener Viktoria 8:1.

"Our algorithm lays a net over the pitch and recognises players based on features such as hairstyle, shoes, shirt number and movement patterns," says company co-founder Lukas Grömer in an interview with the STANDARD. The algorithm recognises running performance, player positions and movement patterns. In a next "timely step", the algorithm will evaluate passes, shots, corner kicks and duel statistics.

Sportclub and Austria

Six clubs are already using Replay. Four of them play in the lower divisions, but the customer list also includes two prominent names, Wiener Sportclub and Austria Vienna. The Violets clearly have their own camera system, while Zone 14 acts more as a development partner for player tracking and visualisation.

"Such systems are becoming more and more popular, even in the very lower leagues," says Sportclub coach Robert Weinstabl to the STANDARD. "Players are also asking for video footage more and more often, they want to analyse themselves." By means of an app, important situations such as attacks, counter-attacks or set-pieces can be noted during the game, which are then collected in a playlist.

Weinstabl himself picks out six to eight scenes per game, which he goes through with the team after a match. The Zone14 system saves him time and spits out a lot of valuable material.

It is also essential for coaches to know what happens far off the ball and how players move,

The Sportclub plays in the Regionalliga East, Weinstabl coaches the club full-time - which is rather unusual for a regional league coach. He is in a privileged situation in this respect, but saving time and money on video analyses would be good for the whole league. Zone 14 charges a monthly fee of 119 euros.

Volleyball and Zoo

Football is understandably the most attractive market for a start-up like Zone14, but the three founders Lukas Grömer (32), Simon Schmiderer (27) and Tobias Gahleitner (24), originally from Upper Austria, are also flirting with other sports. "Handball or volleyball would make sense. In areas like retail, the system could be used, but we don't want that. On the football pitch, the players benefit from our data; people shopping don't want to be tracked," says Simon Schmiderer. But one option would also be to film animals in the zoo and find out how much they are on the move.

The young company, which was founded this year, has so far received financial support from the state development bank AWS. The camera system and the algorithm were developed in the First Incubator Programme, and now the bank is supporting Zone14 as part of the "Trustworthy AI" programme. The programme lasts eight to twelve months, during which certain milestones must be reached. The maximum funding amount is 200,000 euros, regardless of the company.

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Trending Topics Article– zone14

Trending Topics Article– zone14

(from left to right) zone14 founders Tobias Gahleitner, Lukas Grömer and Simon Schmiderer © zone14

zone14: Viennese startup offers AI-supported video analysis to football clubs.

Video analysis and statistics are already commonplace at major football clubs. They help to accurately record the performance of players and optimize it in a targeted manner. However, this requires technical and logistical expertise that many smaller clubs cannot afford. Making these useful tools available to all teams, including amateur football, is the goal of Viennese startup zone14. The young company is developing an artificial intelligence-supported, easy-to-use football video analysis tool called "Replay," including its own camera system.

Democratization of video analysis

"It's changing. The older generation, who identify more as 'gut instinct coaches,' don't want to deal with modern analysis. But even they have young and innovative assistants on the team," Schmiderer says. "The younger generation of coaches, on the other hand, is very different. They want to work with data. You notice that even down to the lower leagues. After all, they see their role models sitting on the bench in the Champions League with a laptop."

Together with Lukas Grömer and Tobias Gahleitner, the Technikum Wien graduate had the idea for zone14 - part of the Entrepreneurship Initiative of the FH Technikum - back in 2019. Two years later, they founded a startup that has developed a video system with Al algorithms for football clubs. Their goal is bringing the democratization of match and video analysis in football.

The idea came to the three founders at the end of 2019. The startup is part of the Entrepreneurship Initiative of the FH Technikum. In the course of the First Incubator of the Austria Wirtschaftsservice (aws), the three have developed a simple, easy-to-mount 4k plug & play camera system. Customers can then upload the videos recorded with it directly to a cloud via the "zone14 Box." There, the AI processes the videos and makes it possible to analyze games and training sessions online.

FK Austria Vienna is partner of zone14

Together with six partner clubs, zone14 finally developed the finished product Replay, which officially launched on the market on Monday. "It was extremely important for us to develop the analysis tool together with the coaches and clubs that will use our product.",  says Tobias Gahleitner. The startup has cooperated with district league team SV Freistädter Bier, Union Neumarkt from the 2nd division in Upper Austria, and USC Markersdorf and TSU Hafnerbach from the 1st and 2nd divisions in Lower Austria. In addition to teams from the lower leagues, the young company was also able to get Wiener Sportclub and FK Austria Vienna as partners. The clubs provide the data that the analysis tool uses for training.

According to zone14, Replay eliminates the hassle of uploading and downloading and hours of editing individual game scenes. Users can organize marked scenes into playlists and then share them with the team or fans. In the future, the AI will automatically recognize and mark events such as goals, free kicks and corner kicks. The algorithm will also collect not only goals, but also all players, including positional data. From personal running statistics to the average position to the space control of each team, a variety of statistics can be calculated.

2022 Expansion throughout the DACH region

The clubs pay a monthly fee for the use of the software, but receive the hardware free of charge. The data is said to be enormously valuable for football clubs to optimize both tactics and their training. Teams are not the only ones to benefit from the precise analysis. Media platforms, fans and individual players are also showing increasing demand for such tools. 

Zone14 is currently still in its infancy, but there are already initial partners and sponsors in the form of football clubs, the FH Technikum and the AWS. At the moment, the service is only available in Austria, but this should not be the case for long. "For us, Austria is something like the incubator market where we test our product. Already next year we want to expand to Germany and Switzerland. In the future, we can also imagine conquering global markets such as Southeast Asia and even the USA," says Simon Schmiderer.

https://www.trendingtopics.at/zone14-wiener-startup-bietet-fussballklubs-ki-gestuetzte-videoanalyse/

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Brutkasten.com Article - zone14

Brutkasten.com Article - zone14

ZONE14: Football data startup that cooperates with Austria Vienna and Wiener Sportklub

The Viennese startup zone14 wants to bring video analysis and statistics like in the Champions League to Austria's soccer fields. And since its young existence, it already has well-known partners.

Perhaps some football fans can remember "legendary" football discussions on TV, when veteran ex-footballers and coaches of the time philosophized about why Austria's football was so unsuccessful. Some of the "old guard" accused the young players of playing too much on the Playstation and no longer spending time outside climbing trees. One former coach even said that "tactics are overrated" and the expression "laptop coach" became a slur. Today, however, it is precisely those data fetishists like Jürgen Klopp, Pep Guardiola or even Thomas Tuchel who are shaping football. Simon Schmiderer, the founder of zone14, is well aware of this.

Less gut feeling, more data

"It's changing. The older generation, who identify more as 'gut instinct coaches,' don't want to deal with modern analysis. But even they have young and innovative assistants on the team," Schmiderer says. "The younger generation of coaches, on the other hand, is very different. They want to work with data. You notice that even down to the lower leagues. After all, they see their role models sitting on the bench in the Champions League with a laptop."

Together with Lukas Grömer and Tobias Gahleitner, the Technikum Wien graduate had the idea for zone14 - part of the Entrepreneurship Initiative of the FH Technikum - back in 2019. Two years later, they founded a startup that has developed a video system with Al algorithms for football clubs. Their goal is bringing the democratization of match and video analysis in football.

Zone14 founder relies on automation

"With zone14, we want to build a brand that stands for innovative and uncomplicated video and data analysis. After all, coaches often sacrifice parts of their free time for it - so it's only fair to have a tool in hand with which analyses are possible without much extra effort," explains Simon. "Until now, 'event' and performance data of players was often tracked by hand. 'Alaba to Casemiro, long pass to Ronaldo. He crosses. We thought to ourselves that it must be possible to automate this."

So the team turned to AI and computer vision to develop algorithms. But then ran into a complication relatively quickly. There was no video footage available for lower leagues. "That meant for us, before we build the algorithm, we first have to develop a camera system," Schmiderer continued. "Our goal was for clubs to have access to professional video that they could process quickly. Many coaches in the lower leagues do their job part-time and don't have the time to sift through the recorded footage for important scenes, post-process and edit. That was the big 'pain point' we had to resolve."

4k Plug&Play camera system for football

While the startup was still in the AWS First Incubator, an easy-to-mount 4k plug-and-play camera system was developed. The recorded videos are then uploaded directly to a cloud via the zone14 box. There, the videos are processed and the trainer can analyze games and units online. The cameras are connected to the box via a LAN cable, and the box to the Internet via the club's W-LAN. Alternatively, tzone14 can also provide a mobile network connection.

(c) ZONE14- The AI of zone14 will soon automatically recognize players even in confused game situations like corner kicks or scrambles in the penalty area.

The system also allows coaches to 'tag' and mark chances, actions, throw-ins or corner kicks "live" right during the game. Tagged scenes can then be organized into playlists and then shared with the team or fans. In the future, important game situations such as goals, free kicks and corner kicks, as well as players, will be automatically recognized and "tagged" by artificial intelligence.

Austria Vienna and Wiener Sportklub

In developing the software, the startup worked with six partner clubs - district league club SV Freistädter Bier, Union Neumarkt from the 2nd class league in Upper Austria, and USC Markersdorf and TSU Hafnerbach from the 1st and 2nd classes in Lower Austria, as well as a regional league club Wiener Sportklub and a Bundesliga club Austria Vienna. Of course, the Violets have their own camera system using which zone14 helps to track and visualize various data of the players.

"We see ourselves as a 'provider' for all clubs. Also for those that play a little further down the league pyramid, in youth or also in women's soccer. There's a lot of potential there. We see that people want to work more professionally," explains Schmiderer.

A lot of potential from zone14

The founder knows that his system is also applicable to other areas, to other team sports for example, but also in retail or other industries. "We have decided against it at the moment, however, but have spoken with the people in charge at Schönbrunn palace, for example. We could be used to find out how the animals travel in the cage," Schmiderer continues.

However, zone14's next goals include collecting feedback once after the launch on September 13, 2021 working on updates and features, improving player recognition in parallel, having the first running data of players ready by the end of the year, visualizing "heat maps" and spatial control and, in the long term, supporting Austrian football in digitalization.

Schmiderer concludes, "We don't see ourselves as Robin Hoods now, but narrowing the gap between the big players in football and the grassroots - the amateur clubs - is a vision that drives us massively."

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