Corinthians brings tech and science into academy development | OneFootball

Corinthians has been increasingly adopting an approach based on science and technology to develop its youth academy players. The goal is to ensure that athletes’ development is tracked more precisely from their earliest years through to a possible arrival in the professional squad.

To do this, the club uses information collected during the youngsters’ daily routine, individual assessments, and data produced in training sessions. Based on this material, the professionals at the Technological Innovation Center for Sports Science have structured a series of protocols that help monitor the players’ physical, technical, and psychological development throughout their training process.

Photo: ©Rodrigo Gazzanel / Ag. Corinthians

The initiative brings together specialists from different areas, including physical training, physiology, nutrition, and dentistry. The idea is to establish common standards for the work and prevent each age group from following a completely different model.

With an integrated methodology, Corinthians is able to track each athlete’s history in greater detail and use that information to guide the next stages of their development.

The project is led by Arthur Plácido, strength training coordinator, Michael de Paula, youth team physiologist, and Walmir Cruz, the club’s performance coordinator. For Walmir, applying science to football also helps put Corinthians in a leading position in the market.

“Innovation means research, technology means future. Corinthians is paying attention to everything happening in Brazil and around the world. We are prepared to bring the good things into our environment here. Focusing on sports science is very important because people will look to you as an example. They will see Corinthians carrying out certain processes and assessments and ask why we are doing that”, he said in an interview with ge.globo.

The youth academy structure is concentrated in two locations: Parque São Jorge and the training center designated for the young players. From under-13 to under-20, the athletes carry out their activities at the complex located near CT Joaquim Grava, used by the professional men’s football team.

Monitoring begins during training sessions. The players go through different types of assessments and data collection, including GPS tracking during on-field activities, strength tests carried out in the gym, and exams focused on different aspects of preparation.

With this set of information in hand, the professionals can identify characteristics that need to be developed individually. In this way, a player may receive specific work to gain strength, improve speed, increase agility, or develop some other aspect necessary for his path.

The participation of the athletes themselves is also part of the methodology. They have access to the information and are guided through the procedures they will undergo, seeking to understand the purpose of each tool used by the club.

“The athlete arrives very young, almost like a blank sheet, and we fill in that sheet over time. We take them to the meeting room and explain everything they are going to do at the club so they understand the tools. Today, since we have large groups, they handle the tablets themselves, log into their gym profiles, answer the daily psychophysiological questionnaires, and follow the metrics. It is an awareness-building effort so they can develop critical thinking and understand the reason behind each process”, physiologist Michael de Paula pointed out.

One of the consequences of this more detailed monitoring can be seen in injury control. After recording only five muscle problems in the previous season, Corinthians’ youth setup managed to reduce that number even further in the following period.

“From under-14 to under-20, we had only one hamstring injury and one adductor strain. From the moment you see a positive result like that, with the boys performing on the field and the number of injuries dropping drastically, the coaches really start believing in the process completely. We do not put together the tactical training sessions, but the coaching staffs now place a lot of trust in the information we provide to manage the workload intensity”, Walmir Cruz highlighted.

The large amount of information accumulated throughout this process has also opened up a new line of work for Corinthians. The database built from the physical, cardiorespiratory, speed, and strength assessments has started to be used in the production of scientific studies.

Currently, the Technological Innovation Center for Sports Science has six papers submitted to high-impact international journals. Another ten studies are still being developed by the team.

One of the first studies produced by the professionals analyzed strength differences among athletes from different age groups and positions.

“The first article we wrote compared isometric strength among different age groups and playing positions. We saw that there is a very marked difference in strength every two years (from under-15 to under-16, and from there to under-20). That is a very interesting finding. In high-performance football, it is very difficult to collect data; most scientific studies are carried out with amateur or mid-level athletes. With our publications, other clubs around the world will be able to look at our work and understand whether these models generate the same responses in elite athletes”, Arthur Plácido said.

If the studies are approved and published, the impact could go beyond player development. The intention is for Corinthians to also be recognized for producing knowledge related to high-performance football.

The strategy could strengthen the club’s image in both the sporting and academic worlds, while also allowing the methods used in the youth academy to be analyzed and eventually serve as a reference for other institutions.

“Sports science changes very quickly, and we are paying attention to everything happening around the world to bring the best of it here. When we start publishing these articles one after another, it will be very good for Corinthians’ image. We will show that we work with the scientific reality of youth football, and we will serve as a reference so that other clubs can also apply these methods”, he concluded.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇧🇷 here.