BENGALURU: Alyal Samal and Ashis Kumar Parida, final-yearB.Tech students at NIT Rourkela, Odisha have been declared the global winnersin the ‘Football Hackathon– Data-Driven Players Performance Assessment’. Inaddition, the team formed by graduated Andalusian engineers and mathematiciansAlvaro Beltran, Sergio Cabezas, and Francisco Ruiz obtained the highest scoreamong the participants from Spain.
The Hackathon, held in early June, was organised by FCBengaluru United, one of India’s most exciting young football clubs, and theirinternational partner, Spanish footballing giant Sevilla FC. A global-firstinitiative jointly hosted by two football clubs, the Hackathon presented aunique opportunity to effectively use data science in the space of professionalfootball scouting and player performance analysis.
Sevilla FC together with FC Bengaluru United gaveparticipants access to one of the largest proprietary scouting datasets in theworld- physical, contextual, kinematical, technical, and tactical oriented datarelated to the players, team, and their opponents.
The Hackathon’s goal was to leverage this data as astrategic asset to create an algorithm to help break down, understand, andevaluate player performance with the ultimate goal of enhancing the quality ofboth the Sevilla FC and FC Bengaluru United squads. The online Hackathon waslaunched on the June 10 in Bengaluru by the leadership team of Sevilla FC and FCBengaluru United, during the Spanish club’s inaugural visit to India.
A total of 4695 teams from across the globe registeredfor the three-day Hackathon, with maximum participation from India.Participants from Spain, Nigeria, USA, Britain, Germany, Canada, Indonesia,Bangladesh, Brazil, France and Kenya were also part of the competition. Livingup to its sobriquet of the ‘Tech Capital of India’, Bengaluru had the highestparticipation from India, while seven Indian teams featured in the global top10.
Expressing their excitement over winning the Hackathon,Ashis pursuing his biomedical engineering said, “Both Alyal and I are huge fansof football. And on top of that, it was a competition organized by FC BengaluruUnited and Sevilla FC, both prominent football clubs. I strongly feel that thiskind of collaboration between European football clubs and India will providenew global opportunities and tech challenges for experts in India and aroundthe world. This will lead to the evolution of new ideas in this particulardomain. And we all knew that when talent meets opportunities, great results areinevitable.”
Talking about the uniqueness of this hackathon, Alyal,who is from the metallurgical and materials science department at NIT Rourkelaadded, “This hackathon was unique in that it had some constraints related tofeature engineering within which we had to work’ we also had several featuresto work upon with those constraints. We learned various new techniques to dealwith this kind of problem statement.”
Expressing his delight over the success of this footballhackathon, Gaurav Manchanda, Owner, FC Bengaluru United said, “We were trulyamazed at the interest shown in the Hackathon, both in India and globally. Theuse of data analytics to provide nuanced insights is gaining prominence insports and football is no exception. Football is a game that arouses tremendouspassion, and to see that fervour married with technical ingenuity as part of agenuine interest in providing data-related solutions was truly enlightening tosee. One of our long-term partnership goals with Sevilla FC is to work onprojects that address technological innovation and the Hackathon was in perfectalignment with that. India lived up toits reputation as the global tech capital and you can be sure there willdefinitely be more such Hackathons organised by FC Bengaluru United and SevillaFC in the near future.”
Adding to Gaurav’s views, Dr. Elías Zamora, Chief DataOfficer, Sevilla FC stated: “The participants in the Hackathon have developedmachine learning algorithms that have helped us to gain a better insight intothe key factors that influence our scouts when they evaluate players fromdifferent positions. A well-defined spectrum of position-dependent contextual,physical, kinematical, and crucial actions explains to a certain extent theopinion of our football experts on the performance of a given player. Theresults obtained in the Hackathon have truly fueled the research line of ourdepartment oriented towards the identification of the fundamental performancecomponents of football players. I really believe that the knowledge createdduring this event will have an impact on the squad conformation of Sevilla FCin the next seasons”.
About Nimida Sports: Nimida Sports is the sports arm ofthe Nimida Group. Nimida Sports was set up in 2019 with a focus on developingsporting talent via a grassroots structure and providing a defined progressionpathway for a sports person onto the national stage. With an emphasis on teamsports such as Football, Hockey, Cricket and Basketball the company has set upacademies and teams in Bengaluru, centered around local player developmentprograms. The goal is to ensure the best that come through will be on par withthe best in the country. The group owns Football Club Bengaluru United thatcompetes in the I-League 2nd Division.
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