We visited Universitatea Craiova staff that shared with us their integrated methodology of work and explained how Iterpro has helped them improve the standard of their practice both on and off the pitch.
Claudiu Stamatescu, Head of Medical
Pleased to see you; can you introduce yourself to our readers?
My name is Claudio Stamatescu; I’m the first team doctor at Universitatea Craiova , in the Romanian Premier League.
Digital innovation and data-driven decision making are hot topics in football. Why do you think they are so important?
It’s very important to collect data regarding the players; the work of all the members of staff, – including coaching staff, medical staff, management – is made easier because all the information can be shared between departments, and it becomes easier to make the right decision.
What impact has Iterpro had on your work? What feature would you say it’s the best one?
When Iterpro began the collaboration with Universitatea Craiova we changed our work, the work regarding the medical staff; we had better collaboration with the coaching staff giving them more data about the injured players, or players who were at a high risk of getting injured. It is crucial to know exactly the moment when a player is likely to be overloaded. This way the manager make the best decision regarding who will be training, who is fit 100%, who should be rested for a match, and so on.
Understanding the physical condition of the players helps the technical staff and the medical staff make the best decisions regarding all the players.
Through Iterpro, we monitor the players to prevent injuries, because prevention is more important than the treatment. We’ve significantly reduced injury rates since Itepro came in.
Can you give us a practical example?
The Iterpro platform is very useful for the medical staff; why? For example, If one player is overloaded in training, or he had a medical condition like tiredness, or soreness in some parts of the body, we can decide together with the coaching staff to manage the work of this player regarding the next session. Before the following session we have regular discussions and we take the proper decision regarding one or all the players that are in a similar condition.
What are your thoughts about the future of football innovation?
Football will continually develop, it is a fact. The medical technology in football will reach a very high level, I am certain of this. It already allows the concentration of all the data required by a medical department of a football team on a single platform, where data on the physical condition of the players, the risk of potential injuries, the medical investigations that need to be made after certain injuries suffered by the players can be entered. Having all this in a single place brings major benefits to the medical staff in the sense that it can shorten the decision-making time regarding the strategy that needs to be applied to each player, which in this case means treatment, training and recovery. In this way, the time required for the player to be 100% fit and ready to perform is much shorter.
Cornel Bejan, Head of Performance
Pleased to see you; can you introduce yourself to our readers?
My name is Cornel Bejan, I’m the First Team fitness coach at Universitatea Craiova. Alongside my role at the Club I am completing a PhD at the University of Bucharest on the topic of integrated physical training in football. I work together with the other practitioners of our department and our aim is to improve the team’s performance both collectively and on an individual level.
Do you think Digital innovation and data-driven decision making are hot topics in football. Why do you think they are so important in football? If so, why?
A data-driven approach allows us to build a large database for each player related to his injury history, physical attributes as well as technical skills. This data allows us to have more information and ultimately take better decisions. Having this kind of information enhances the communication between departments so that players’ management becomes more effective. This in turn reduces the risk of injury and improves performance.
What impact has Iterpro had on your work?
Since we started working with Iterpro we grew from every point of view as a club. We are much more organized and we communicate much more effectively between departments – I really mean it.
Can you give us a practical example? How did that translate into practice?
We learned to analyse and monitor not only training sessions, but also each drill within the sessions as well as the training week. In this way we can observe the dynamics of the training process, especially within microcycles. In other words, we can understand better what we are doing on the pitch.
Andrea Tedesco, Assistant Coach
Pleased to see you; can you introduce yourself to our readers?
I am Andrea Tedesco and I am the Assistant Coach at Universitatea Craiova. Sharing information is becoming crucial in football since important decisions need to be taken in a very limited amount of time. From a technical and tactical point of view it is very useful for a coach to have as much information as possible in order to take those decisions that become crucial for the achievement of results on the pitch.
Digital innovation and data-driven decision making are hot topics in football. Why do you think they are so important?
What Did Iterpro have an impact has Iterpro had on your work?
Since we began to use Iterpro software and support, we’ve improved from many points of view. One of the most important is for sure the communication sharing between all the members of the staff and the time used for that.
Even the support offered by the consultants had an important role in defining roles within our staff linked with our training methodology, and also for the medical department and all the practitioners involved in the football club. Knowing in detail the psychological and physical conditions of the players helps the coaching staff to take better decisions when it comes to picking the best team before a game.
Iterpro and the daily use of its software helped us to realize the real amount of data is available and cannot be gathered simply observing training sessions; thanks to specific feedbacks (from the players themselves, or from devices like GPS) the coaching staff can now work precisely toward the main goal, the results on the pitch.
What feature would you say it’s the best one?
One aspect I liked most -and that I cannot avoid anymore- is the assessment of workload immediately after training. Specifically, it happened that – after the feedback we had from the support staff – we modified drills of the following training session in order to adapt it to the squad’s needs. Checking all the data either live or after the session, helps to understand if the content was appropriate, if there is something to improve, if the target has been reached.
What are your thoughts about the future of football innovation?
The digital innovation in the world of football – and in sports in general- is becoming more and more important. The football industry needs to reduce the margin of risks, especially because of the economic implications. Iterpro has massively helped us to combine the psychological and technical/tactical needs of our players. Also, it allowed us to effectively plan the workload based on the individual needs as well as the weaknesses we identified and tried to improve during training. In this way we managed to reach a very high quality of work, which was not possible before our partnership with Iterpro.
Francesco Zanasi, Iterpro Sport Scientist & Performance Consultant
Pleased to see you; can you introduce yourself to our readers?
I’m Francesco Zanasi, I’m an Iterpro Sport Scientist, and this is my second season as consultant for Universitatea Craiova.
Digital innovation and data-driven decision making are hot topics in football. Why do you think they are so important?
A data driven approach in football is important since it means that staff can plan and develop the training process based on objective information rather than guesswork. Communication and information sharing is important because it supports us -the staff and the club- in our daily work, in order to better understand what is happening inside and outside the pitch.
What are the main responsibilities of your role?
In Universitatea Craiova I am responsible for players testing and monitoring, performance analysis, recovery strategies and performance optimization.
I collect data from different sources such as GPS, wellbeing questionnaires, rate of perceived exertion (RPE), salivary test, anthropometric assessments, game stats and medical stats.
My day starts screening the wellbeing of the player, understanding how they are feeling before the session; I then help the coaching staff during training and, at the end of it, I collect and analyze the data of the session. The main goal since we started the collaboration with Universitatea Craiova was creating a high performance environment and I believe we manage to achieve it.
