The African soccer federation will supply 2,650 PlayerTek GPS units to its 54 member countries under the terms of a new agreement announced on Wednesday by Catapult and the Confédération Africaine de Football.
The CAF first explored a continental player tracking program earlier this year to supply its five World Cup qualifiers—Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria, Tunisia, and Senegal—with a similar device from a different vendor, FieldWiz. The CAF also planned to distribute to distribute FieldWiz devices to the 49 other national federations as well, but this new agreement signals a change in supplier to Catapult. Egypt already switched to PlayerTek back in May.
“CAF wants to move safety issues forward at all levels, and the health of our players is one of them,” said Anthony Baffoe, CAF deputy general secretary, in a statement. “Monitoring the performance of our players is important to ensure that African football reaches the global level it deserves. With Catapult services, we will be able to analyze every move each player makes and interpret their impact on their physical condition and ultimately on the teams’ performances. Having a scientific and reliable database will allow the technical teams of our member federations to take the right decisions.
“African footballers have talent, but we have to challenge our own limits.”
Catapult provides athlete tracking technology to more than 1,800 teams across the world, including some of the leading clubs across the Netherlands, Germany, Argentina, and England—namely, Ajax, Bayern Munich, Boca Juniors, and Chelsea. Elite professional clubs typically use Catapult’s first-tier product, OptimEye. Catapult also offers the mid-range wearable, PlayerTek, which it acquired in 2016, and a new prosumer option, PLAYR. PlayerTek logs 1,000 data points per second, including such metrics as distance covered, speed, overall training load, impacts, work ratio, and heart rate.
“The deal between CAF and Catapult is an example of how performance technology is increasingly seen as a key factor in achieving the objectives being driven by the talent pathways of major leagues and federations,” said Karl Hogan, Catapult commercial director, in a statement. “CAF have raised the bar in this regard by investing in athlete monitoring systems on a significant scale, encouraging the development of sports science throughout their region by providing member nations with access to a high-quality performance infrastructure.”
SportTechie Takeaway
Such continental collaboration continues to be a novel way of updating the infrastructure of African soccer. In June, former World Cup players Radhi Jaidi of Tunisia and Didier Drogba of the Ivory Coast told BBC Sport that was an area needing improvement. Having a willingness to help other member nations, a uniform tracking system, the pedigree of Catapult, and almost exactly four years until the next World Cup should enhance that effort.