In day five of Orlando Pirates’ pre-season camp, more details have emerged on what goes into preparing the MTN8 and Nedbank Cup champions for a long and a grueling season.
The Buccaneers are leaving no stone unturned in getting ready for the 2023/24 campaign in which they will also be joining champions Mamelodi Sundowns in the CAF Champions League as two representatives from Mzansi.
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Speaking from Rustenburg where Bucs are based for the first of their planned two-phase camps, performance analyst Rayaan Jacobs gets into detail on how he and his department are working hand in hand with the technical team and players to try and achieve the intended goals for the club.
“Pre-season is so important. What you do, like every building you have to start with the foundation and we believe the foundation in the pre-season is to re-introduce the principles of our playing philosophy – our game model, take out some of the key components and introduce it not only to the new players but also a reminder to the players who were here last season,” said Jacobs, speaking through the club’s media department.
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“In the analysis department it’s quite a complex process but we have to simplify it as best as possible not only for the coaches but for the players and that involves using both data and video to really look at the game in detail. We try to understand not only the players (and) what the coach want but we try and merge the two. I think the key for the club is to find a very good combination or synergy between the subjective information and the measurable information and we try and align that with our playing philosophy. I think from a day-to-day perspective, we try to record the trainings, we try to record the games and the we try and analyse exactly what we want to take out. There is so much that we can look into but what we do is we try and focus on handful of KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that we think will help develop our game model and then we try and feed that back to the coaches, and most importantly we try and feed that back to the players,” he said.
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