Tutorial for my Tactical Analysis Methods
Welcome to my tutorial for my tactical analysis methods. This tutorial will talk you through the steps to producing the three-segment slides you see on my Twitter:
This will be done in five parts:
Part one to part three relate to acquiring the footage and telestrating it; part four and part five are more relevant to the PowerPoint, so skip ahead if that’s what you’re here for!
Part One: Sourcing Footage & Downloading for Analysis
Sourcing footage is a somewhat easy process if you know what you’re looking for. A coach of a youth team may well record training/match footage; this is just as viable as an analyst who watches elite-level matches for opposition analysis or scouting.
When searching for the footage, use well renowned websites for full match replays. For the purpose of analysing, you will want to telestrate the footage; this is annotating but in video format, as you see on Match of the Day or Sky Sports. In order to telestrate it, you will need to download the relevant clip of the footage. This is a two step process, and you will need to utilise two programmes:
1) OBS Studio (64 bit) — link
2) Key Frame Sports — link
OBS Studio allows you to record footage from the window open on your device; the footage you want to analyse if you have it open. Simply press start recording, make sure you go into full screen mode in the match and allow the section of the match you want to analyse to pass. Exit full screen and stop recording; the video file should be in the ‘‘videos’’ section of your documents.
From here, you will now want to telestrate the footage. Metrica-Sports (link) is a good programme for this purpose (and has an unpaid version), but I think Key Frame Sports is better for this purpose; it produces more vibrant, eye-catching telestration. Key Frame Sport offers a 14 day free trial which is useful for anyone who wants to dabble in tactical analysis without commitment. Once in Key Frame, simply upload your footage into the game-footage section; it is all quite self-explanatory at this stage. Footage normally uploads within a couple of minutes, and is stored online, so don’t worry about losing it if you refresh the page. Upon the footage uploading, simply click on the file you want to analyse and you can proceed to the following step.
Part Two: Where and How to Analyse in-game
Choosing a clip to analyse is a surprisingly difficult skill. You need to ensure the clip is representative of the game if you’re analysing a tactical facet for a team (or otherwise state this). If your clip is on an individual’s performance, make sure it includes the facets you want to analyse. If it is merely on one small facet, make sure you’ve chosen an ideal clip with an optimal outcome (or again, state otherwise in a disclaimer).
To ensure you are filling the criteria required for a good clip, you will need to know where in a game to look. If I am analysing a game, I often soft-rewatch the match (rewatch but skip unnecessary phases in the game) to find a specific period in the game for the facet I am looking for, and then rewatch that period in detail a third time. The first watch of the match (presumably live) will give you a good indicator of what to look out for, what contributed to a result or performance, and who played well and why. If you struggle to remember things like this, take notes and leave a time stamp so you can skip to that section upon rewatching.
Part Three: Telestration Methods
This is the fun part. Once you have done the administrative tasks prior, you are now ready to annotate, analyse and present.
There are a variety of useful features on whatever programme you use, be it Key Frame Sports or Metrica Sports. The first thing you want to do is use the mask feature on Key Frame Sports (or chroma key on Metrica). This renders the players as distinct from the pitch, allowing telestrations to mesh seamlessly without obscuring view of the player. Simply click on the function and then click on the pitch. Depending on the camera angle and footage quality, you may have to dust up on un-masked sections. The end-product from this step is to have the pitch shaded red, but the players still visible over the masking.
As for the rest of the useful functions, we have:
· a spotlight — good for highlighting a specific player
· a polygon — good for highlighting zones of the pitch
· arrows (curved, dot to dot, straight) — good for showing passes, movements or both
· circles and linked circles — good for showing groups or lines of players
· a player cut-out function — good for prioritising highlighting a players’ movements (see image below)
Play around with the colour and opacity of arrows and shapes in order to optimise presentation of the actions you want to highlight. Bear in mind that what might be obvious to you is not obvious for your audience (teammates, followers on Twitter, etc).
Part Four: From Image to Interactive PowerPoint
Once you have analysed the phase of the game you are interested in, you have two choices: retain the video format or use a still (representative still image of the analysed section). Due to copyright restrictions, I favour still images for upload onto Twitter. I will take a screenshot of the relevant section (press windows key + print screen on Windows), and import it to a slideshow programme, such as PowerPoint (Windows) or Keynote (Apple).
I set the background as grey, darkness 90%. This can be done in format background. For the pitch, I searched for a scale-image of a football pitch and overlaid each marking with a 1.5pt thickness line, on grey, darkness 15%. Group the entire pitch (hold shift and click each segment, then right click and select group). Send it to back, so you can manoeuvre player markings. Obviously, you are going to want to delete the pitch image once you have your own.
Adding the players is fairly simple; make a small circle from the insert shapes function, and size it appropriately. You can add player numbers if you want but I find these difficult to read with the resolution when uploading to Twitter. Make 22 players and colour them appropriately; I often leave a black background and simply change the outline colour. I make sure the outline weighting is 1.5pt. you can either make a player for one team and copy paste (ctrl C -> ctrl V) nine times or simply make 22 players and shift-select to change their colour simultaneously.
Pitch markings are completely personal, but the norm is as shown below — wide space, half space, central zones:
Part Five: The End-Product
From here, it is fairly simple: add and crop your still image that you have telestrated and add text. I use the font Eras Medium (I think it is fun and catches the eye, although it can be harder to read on mobile devices if you are uploading to Twitter). Pitch markings are useful to be able to drag the player icons into the correct positions but be aware that camera angles can distort your perception of depth. Use the D or the centre circle to gauge positions. For those not in frame, you will have to estimate, but this is fairly accurate if you watch the clip surrounding the still as you often get a view of the other players and you can extrapolate/reverse where their positions were when you took the still image.
After this, it is just about cleaning up the slide. If you want a two-frame slide, make sure everything is equal size.
You can ensure the pitch is maintained to scale if you go into format shape (for the grouped pitch) and click size and position. Ensure the scale is 100% — 100%:
You can rotate the pitch to make a horizontal slide or keep it vertical; the choice is yours; it’s really about personal preference, what you are presenting and your audience.
Ultimately, this should help you to produce analysis slides, in a simple and easy to repeat manner. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask, just DM me on Twitter @utd_Visionary or reply to the tweet! I have also made a template PowerPoint available for a period of time, so you can DM me for access to that.
I hope you all enjoyed and thanks for reading!
