Major League Soccer Youth

Innovation on and off the field

Major League Soccer is a men's professional soccer league comprised by 23 teams, 20 in the U.S. and 3 in Canada. The Generation adidas Cup is the league’s annual elite youth tournament for teams with players under 17 years of age. The tournament focuses on player development, showcasing the best teams and future stars. The 2018 Cup took place in March and welcomed teams from several other countries, including Spain, Germany, Japan and Mexico.

Scouting challenges

Scouting at the Generation adidas Cup is common, but it is not feasible for scouts to see all players in person. That is why Major League Soccer relies on ORTEC Sports to provide scouts with player performance data.

Major League Soccer has been an ORTEC customer for several years. They count on ORTEC Sports to deliver all relevant tournament information and player statistics on a dashboard. Our team provides detailed and objective data analysis, using video analytics tools along with reports that summarize key match statistics. At first glance, this may seem like an easy job, but sports analytics is more than just counting zeroes and ones.

Highly detailed and accurate data must be gathered in real-time during a match, and often following a match, using a very stable connection. Over 130 analysts work from 3 different continents to assess this data and guarantee reliability. By applying mathematics, we obtain useful reports and powerful visualizations that make the data understandable for scouts and other soccer experts who later apply it in their work for coaching or evaluation purposes.

Data-based scouting and coaching

With our software, users can create specific performance profiles based on analytics. For example, they can evaluate ‘must have’ characteristics for a defender or a left wing back. This criteria helps users refine their team vision and enables them to specify their requirements. Scouts can then decide which talent is worth seeing in person. Coaches can also make informed decisions about who they could use to complement their soccer team or whether they can replace an individual player.

The database is not only useful for scouts and coaches, it helps players with their own development as well. It incorporates data beyond the Generation adidas Cup, documenting over 15,000 matches and over 20,000 players in more than 40 leagues worldwide.

The benefits of analytics in sports

With ORTEC’s analytics solutions, Major League Soccer has become a data-driven organization. Scouting and coaching decisions are made using data, rather than simply gut feel. Major League Soccer saw an opportunity to leverage some of this data in a mobile app. They asked ORTEC for Communications to develop an app for use during the Generation adidas Cup finals.

With our team’s effort, key stakeholders had easy access to the tournament schedule, locations and live scores, as well as stats for broadcasted matches. Latest news from the league’s website was also provided, as well as team and player statistics. All in all, a great use case for sports innovation on and off the field.