Understanding the FIFA quality performance reports for electronic performance and tracking systems: from science to practice

ABSTRACT

The world’s football-governing body, FIFA, developed the FIFA Quality Programme to set internationally recognized industry standards for electronic performance and tracking systems (EPTS). The positioning and velocity data from different EPTS, discretized into velocity bands, were validated against criteria measures. Discussions have been ongoing between practitioners regarding the FIFA quality performance reports, particularly when the findings are used to compare accuracy between systems. However, there are important methodological issues that should be addressed when interpreting these findings. The aim of this article is to provide practitioners with guidance on interpreting the results of FIFA’s EPTS quality performance reports. We demonstrate that several methodological factors should be considered. For example, EPTS reports evaluate individual systems against criteria measures but systems are often not evaluated concurrently (e.g., on the same day using the same participants). Furthermore, technical considerations such as the total number of cameras used for optical (OPT) systems, the total number of antennas used by local positioning systems (LPS), the total number of satellites available for global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) and the velocity bands should be considered before interpreting the post-test results reported for each EPTS. Specifically, comparisons between GNSS, LPS and/or OPT systems are inadvisable unless they are used within the same observation.

KEYWORDS:

• Accuracy
• validity
• soccer

Acknowledgments

The authors are very grateful to Dr. Shaun McLaren for the valuable feedback on the draft manuscript. Also, the authors would like to acknowledge all members associated with the FIFA Quality Programme since this project is contributing to the development of science in football.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflict of interest. JM.O.L. worked for an Electronic Performance Tracking System’s manufacturer (RealTrack Systems, Almería, Spain), which was involved in the tests related to the FIFA Quality program, from June 2017 to September 2019. This manuscript is original and not previously published, nor is it being considered elsewhere until a decision is made as to its acceptability by Science and Medicine in Football.

Notes from the editorial office

The group at Victoria University worked with FIFA in validating athlete tracking systems and their assessment against a professional standard. They were invited to write a response to this commentary, however we received no correspondence.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

José M. Oliva-Lozano was supported by a grant funded by Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades [FPU18/04434]