BCAM holds the first Working Group Meeting of the MATH4SPORTS project

• In the first Working Group Meeting on Statistical Methods for Team Sports and Injury Prevention participated several academic institutions and representatives of European professional football clubs

The Basque Centre for Applied Mathematics - BCAM hosted the first Group Meeting on Statistical methods for Team Sports and Injury Prevention at the centre in Bilbao last September 25-26^th. The event was closed to the public and in a face-to-face format, with the financial support of the Provincial Council of Bizkaia and the European Regional Development Fund within the framework as part of the project MATH4SPORTS: Mathematical Modelling for the Sports Industry: Health & Performance (6/2022-6/2024). Various academic institutions and football clubs’ representatives took part in the event.

During both days of the event, the participants discussed and talked about various topics related to team sports such as integrating traditional coaching with data insights, wearable technology an IoT in sports, player load and fatigue monitoring and injury prevention strategies.

Spanning two days, the event began on Monday with the Public Lecture by Professor Christophe Ley from the University of Luxembourg titled “Statistically Enhanced Learning – new opportunities for sports analytics and sports medicine”. On the same day, Alex Gerharz (Data Scientist at Borussia Dortmund) explain how data science strategies are adopted in his club. The second day of the meeting took place in Athletic Club facilities in Lezama where Jon Larruskain (Sports Scientist at Athletic Club) hosted the meeting and where  Ruud Van Elk from PSV Eindhoven, Catarina Bajanca from SL Benfica, Mikhail Zhilkin from Arsenal FC, and Alex Gerharz from Borussia Dortmund  shared the main challenges in their clubs.

An enriching collaboration

The event was attended by Lore Zumeta, Jone Rentería, and Mikel Pérez (Basque Center for Applied Mathematics - BCAM), Dae-Jin Lee (IE University), Andreas Bender (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich), Christophe Ley and Sofia Loizidou (University of Luxembourg), and Andreas Gröll (Technical University of Dortmund). From the professional football teams, Mikhail Zilikin (First Team Data Scientist at Arsenal FC), Alex Gerharz (First Team Data Scientist at Borussia Dortmund), Catarina Bajanca (Sports Scientist at SL Benfica), Ruud Van Elk (Head of Sports science and Analytics at PSV Eindhoven) and Jon Larruskain (Head of Sports science at Athletic Club) participated.

 “It was a unique intersection of insights! The meeting brought together the worlds of academia and European football professionals, fostering an unparalleled exchange of knowledge” says Dae-Jin Lee.