SAP Perfect Lap Issue 02
A
goalkeeper’s mental archive of where a particular
striker tends to shoot, fed by intensive pre-match
data analysis, may prove as important to a result
as hard yards on a training pitch. Bierhoff recalls
Bierhoff recalls that in the 2006 World Cup, he
was “sure” Germany would prevail in a quarter-final penalty shootout with Argentina, because of the quality of data preparation
goalkeeper Jans Lehmann had undertaken with coach Andreas
Kopke [Germany won 4-2].
Eight years on, ahead of the 2014 tournament, those data tools
have advanced hugely. “SAP has provided us with an incredible
information application for the players,” says Bierhoff, “so all the
players get the information we have about the opponents and their
own performances in a very interesting and smart way.”
Similarly, during those oh-so-intense few seconds when a raging
grid of F1 cars is straining on the leash, desperate for ‘lights
out’, drivers and the engineering teams behind them know that
whatever unknowns they may encounter, the variables within their
grasp have been controlled. “We spend a lot of time studying the
starts,” says Button. “It can be to do with the actual initial pullaway phase, the drive-out phase, or it might be in terms of where
you want to be going into turn one – on the inside or the outside
– which we study quite a lot, to understand what position we can
probably find ourselves in exiting turn one and two.”
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