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Episode 13: Round 20 & in conversation w/ Marius Fischer, First Team Analyst at Viborg FF
518 Plays2 years ago
Part 1: Reviewing the action from round 20 of the Danish Superliga
Part 2: In conversation with Marius Fischer (@gegenpressing92), First Team Analyst at Viborg FF, discussing his role with the club and how the setup is geared towards enabling them to compete with the traditional elite of Danish football.
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Transcript
Kickoff: Super League Weekend Recap
00:00:08
Speaker
This is Danish Dynamite, the Superleaguer podcast, brought to you by footballindermark.com. Hello and welcome to episode number 13 of Danish Dynamite, the Superleaguer podcast. 13, unlucky for some, but very lucky for a number of teams this weekend with some huge results in the Superleaguer. So looking forward to digging into this. And I've got a very special guest in part two of the show, Marius Fisher, first team performance analyst
00:00:37
Speaker
at V-Borg. So a very interesting team doing very interesting things and a lot of that is based on the amazing capabilities they have in the back room and Marius is a big part of that so looking forward to sharing a conversation with him in part two and understanding a bit about what he does and how he has contributed to V-Borg's amazing success this season that sees them still sitting in that top three race and looking good for it too.
00:01:05
Speaker
But before we get into that, it makes sense to talk a little bit about the weekend's action.
Match Analysis: AGF and V-Borg Highlights
00:01:10
Speaker
It started on Friday night with AGF taking on Horsons and this was a game of few chances. AGF really made the most of what they created. It started with a goal through a Mortensen penalty and really, is there anyone in the Super League you'd rather have taking a penalty at the moment than Patrick Mortensen? Just so cool when he stepped up.
00:01:29
Speaker
side footed it right in the bottom corner, sent to keep it the wrong way and that really set Agieff on course for victory. They made it 2-0 through a Jan-Bissac header and although Horsens had a couple of chances there wasn't really much prospect of them coming back into this. What will boost their chances is I see Matej Delacic back in contention to play so he'll probably play
00:01:51
Speaker
this coming weekend and that should boost their chances because before he got injured he was really integral to them and if they're going to survive they're going to need him back at his best. Then V-Borg played Ranners in V-Borg and this was a really interesting game because V-Borg went 2-0 up and normally at that point it's pretty hard to peg them back but Ranners chipped away in the second half got back to 2-1.
00:02:13
Speaker
And Veeble then had a really good chance to win it in the dying stages of the game. Sophos Berger got put through, sort of on the penalty spot, had a chance to finish first time and hit it straight at the keeper and you could see how disappointed he was. And what a moment that would have been for him had he scored.
00:02:28
Speaker
it finished on his even tool and i think that that was definitely two points dropped for v-borg because at tunal up you'd have thought they'd have what it takes to see the game out but fair play to runners they really came back into it strong and when i was at the game a couple of weeks ago the v-borg michigan game
00:02:45
Speaker
I noticed Thomas Thomas Berg was there so obviously the notes that he made then paid off and he found the formula to get back into the game so fair play to Rannerts.
Surprising Outcomes: Lingbe and FC Copenhagen
00:02:55
Speaker
Silkeborg, FC Nordsland, El Plastico and this was a remarkable game.
00:03:00
Speaker
it finished with the most dramatic of late goals, but it started with Emiliano Marcóndez with really a striker's goal. Low cross whipped in, he let it come across his body and finished into the bottom corner. That was a really, really, really nice finish. That's definitely a tough technique to master. Nordsland started strong and looked like they were going to dominate proceedings, but it's not often that Silverborg have
00:03:24
Speaker
less possession and fewer passes over the course of 90 minutes. But, you know, Nordsland managed that, which is testament to their quality. But, the silver will came back on level terms and Tony Adamson worked really hard for that goal and was perhaps unlucky not to score in the game. He looked like he's growing with confidence every week and getting brighter and brighter. And I think the goals will come for him. But,
00:03:44
Speaker
the winner came
00:04:04
Speaker
felt that they deserved to lose it and that's probably fair but at the same time Silkelborg had some really good chances throughout the game so credit to them for keeping on pushing really and that late goal will really boost their spirits going into the run-in. Perhaps the shock of the weekend came in Lingbe as they managed their second win of the season against Bromby and this is somewhat of a Derby game. I mean the stadium was absolutely packed, the stand behind the goal which is
00:04:30
Speaker
usually only occupied when teams bring a big away contingent, which of course, Gombe always do. That was packed out, and it was a really great atmosphere. Loongby went ahead through Finn Bogerson in the second half, actually, and he missed a large part of the season through injury, and I felt really bad for him that the goal was initially ruled offside, which cut short his celebrations. And you know, when a goal's given after a lengthy break, the players do celebrate, but
00:04:56
Speaker
It's not the same as that initial rush of adrenaline that comes when you score a goal. So I felt a little for him that he wasn't able to fully celebrate. But I also thought Kiekenborg in goal for Loongby really, really played well. He made some fantastic saves at 0-0 and kept them in the game when they were ahead. There were some clear-cut chances that I think on another day, Hornby could have won that game 2-1, 3-1, but he was really on top form and kept them in the game.
00:05:24
Speaker
just reward for them. And I think what's interesting with Loombi is that in the transfer window, they sold a lot of key players and it looked like they had just accepted their fate. They were going to go down. And I think that that's allowing them to play with a bit more freedom now because nobody is expecting anything from them. And here they are, only two points away from Alborg above them.
00:05:44
Speaker
OK, then with a further eight points or so to safety. But stranger things have happened. And if they keep playing like this with key players like Andreas Bielen back, Finn Bogus and scoring again, who knows what could happen? They could certainly make things interesting. The performance of the weekend, though, unquestionably came from FC Copenhagen, who ran out seven nil winners against OB. OB had a couple of red cards, which almost certainly exacerbated the score line.
00:06:11
Speaker
The first was incredibly harsh. I thought the defender slipped and handballed it, having slipped over. It wasn't deliberate, but the referee gave a penalty, quite rightly, but gave a red card, which I thought was incredibly harsh. And from that point, really, FC Cohen ever looked back. They had 70% possession. They had 14 shots to Obie's one, and Mohammad Dharami was really in his most mercurial form.
00:06:35
Speaker
He, his ability to take the ball and run at speed and draw defenders is probably the best in the league when he's on that kind of form. And I think encouragingly for FC Copenhagen fans, his end product is very much there. You know, he scored a couple of goals. He was constantly a threat. He was providing assists. He was doing everything. And so what he gives them is something that no other player on their team can. So if they are to challenge for the title this season, and I think on the strength of that result, they're very much.
00:07:03
Speaker
in the driving seat now, the bookies have them reasonably strong favorites despite not being top currently. But I think that the quality of their squad might just get them over the line and he's going to be a really big part of that. So those results leave the table in pretty interesting place. So FC Nordsland still top by three points, but the gap is closing now and FC Copenhagen have taken up second spot and that their goal difference is now the best in the league after that seven nil victory.
00:07:32
Speaker
that could be crucial at the end of the season. FC Co have six wins on the bounce, so they're the best formed team in the league. And Veeble hang on to third place and they've got quite a comfortable cushion in that third place. And obviously third place is crucial this season because that's the cutoff for European places.
League Standings Update
00:07:51
Speaker
Now there might end up being another one, depending on who wins the cup. But that
00:07:56
Speaker
that final place is subject to playoff as well. So having a seven point gap there is really important. Then you've got AGF, amazingly up in fourth. Amazing how things can turn around so quickly. And yeah, they're sitting pretty in fourth with a positive goal difference. Although on 29 points, the gap between fourth and ninth
00:08:17
Speaker
It's only four points, so things can change dramatically. But I think the big thing to note is that FC Michelin and Bromby are both in the lower half of the table. And we've only got two more games until the split. So it's going to be really interesting what happens there between, I guess, AGF, Ranas in fifth, Silkerborg in sixth, and Michelin and Bromby. I think it's probably safe to say that OB Horsens, Alborg and Lüngbier are going to make up the remainder of the relegation group. But those final two spots are going to be really
00:08:46
Speaker
entertaining, watching how that's going to play out.
Round 21 Match Previews
00:08:50
Speaker
We've got some really exciting games to look forward to in round 21. I think the standout games for me are probably Bronbe taking on Silkeborg on Sunday late afternoon. I think that's 4 p.m. kickoff UK time. And those two teams, as I've just said, are really fighting out for that championship place. Bronbe at home create a fantastic atmosphere. You know, they've got a great surface to play on.
00:09:17
Speaker
that should be really entertaining. And I think the other game that really captures my attention is V-ball FC Nordsland. This is, of course, first playing third.
00:09:26
Speaker
And V-ball could win this. There's a scenario where they could go level on points at the top of the table if FC Copenhagen don't
Transition to Part Two with Guest Introduction
00:09:36
Speaker
win. And so that could really put the cat amongst the pigeons in terms of the title race. So that's going to be a fascinating encounter. So those are really the two games I'm going to keep an eye on. But you've also got OB taking on OB, the two teams that sound the same to me, but Odensa against Alborg, which is
00:09:55
Speaker
of bottom of the table clash, but Alborg were really quite unlucky actually in the last round of games. I haven't spoken about their game yet, but they created a number of really good chances and were unlucky not to beat Michelin on Monday. Encouraging from a performance point of view and to only take a point from that is disappointing for them. You can see how frustrated Eric Cameron was on the touchline, but they are seven points from safety now and so if they can
00:10:22
Speaker
can keep putting together performances like they did on Monday. I think there's a good chance they can chip away at that gap, but it starts with the game on Friday against OB. FC Michelin play Loongbi and I went to the reverse of that fixture earlier in the season where
00:10:39
Speaker
Michelin went ahead 3-0 and were pegged back to 3-0. It's probably the most dramatic game of the season. That was fantastic. So a repeat of that would be very welcome. Horsons take on FC Copenhagen. And yeah, this is a fixture that, again, Horsons won earlier in the season. So don't rule out an upset in this one, but FC Copenhagen have really sort of clicked into gear and they look a different side to the one that we saw in the beginning part of the year under Thorpe.
00:11:04
Speaker
And then the final fixture on Monday is Ranas playing AGF. And again, this is a, you know, fourth versus fifth, two teams that, you know, with a victory can solidify their place in the championship group. So all to play for there. And that should be a really interesting encounter. So as ever, we've got lots of Super Leaguer football to look forward to in round 21. And I'll be back next week to round up that action.
Guest Spotlight: Marius Fisher's Football Journey
00:11:30
Speaker
let me know which games you're going to be watching which ones you're most excited for but as always if you're outside of Scandinavia you can catch all of these on one football or on fifa plus and they stream all the games for free there's no commentary but if you keep an eye on a twitter timeline there's normally plenty of of people myself included talking about it in english so enjoy the football this weekend and stay tuned for part two when i'll be speaking to marius fisher of vibor
00:11:59
Speaker
Welcome to part two, and I'm delighted to be joined by Viborg first team analyst, Marius Fischer. Marius, welcome. Is it snowing where you are? It actually was when I woke up this morning, but you know, Germany, the snow mostly goes away quite quickly. So I think the last time that I could go on a snow ride, it's like probably 10 years ago. So it's not, we never had a white Christmas for some years. So that's how it is.
00:12:27
Speaker
And so you're in Germany, how much time do you spend over in in Viborg? Too much if you ask my girlfriend, but yeah, it got increased in the last few months. So the first year when I was in Russia before working only remote because Germany, Russia was just too far away. I went to Viborg and I thought, OK,
00:12:48
Speaker
I think the deal and it was more like a soft deal. There was no obligation to do it. It was like maybe once in a quarter and it was like how the first year went and then obviously 2022 and there was so much success and so much stuff to do. And also my work got much more, yeah, much more to add on. I've been there probably every three weeks or every four weeks. So really regular.
00:13:15
Speaker
And yeah, now in April, so in three weeks, I go to VBOC for six weeks in a row, the club, yeah, Spenceman Apartments that I'm there for the decisive part of the season, so that will be exciting. Amazing. And I wonder if you could give just a bit of insight into what your role entails and kind of what your background is, how you got into football, and what does a first team analyst do?
00:13:40
Speaker
Yeah, so my background is quite, you could say classic on the first side because I was a player, not on a good level, amateur level. I was talented, but never had like the athleticism to really make it on a professional level.
00:13:55
Speaker
So that was basically my first 22 years of my life. And then I decided, okay, I'm not really getting anywhere with playing. And then I added to being a coach parallely the first two years. So I was coaching a youth team, the same team that I played for that made sense at that time.
00:14:14
Speaker
And then I thought, okay, let's make a cut here and focus just on coaching. And then I coached some German academy teams under 15, under 16 was the highest age group. But even in good academies in Germany, you don't really earn a lot of money and it's so much effort. It's not like a professional football where your training time is in the morning. So it's basically you can
00:14:39
Speaker
It's basically news football always in the evening. So I was away from five until nine for five days in the week.
00:14:47
Speaker
or yeah, probably just maybe I got the costs for my traveling covered at least, but nothing more. And this is really hard to really tell your girlfriend that you're five days away in the evening where the quality time normally starts. So that was the reason why I made a cut and then COVID hits. So I also had to find maybe new ways and then I thought, okay,
00:15:11
Speaker
You got quite a big Twitter account built in the last few months by my data visualization. So just make like a small tweet. I'm looking for a remote job and basically I was looking for any small thing I could help with.
00:15:25
Speaker
Yeah, and then actually I got some offers from teams, from good teams, from first division teams in Europe, and then I decided to join FC Sochi in Russia. But I was more like the, you could say, the second or the third arm of the head of analysis. So I was doing the task that he told me, a bit of pointed analysis, a bit tagging of your own games.
00:15:51
Speaker
And then we did well and he was approached by Seteska Moscow, even bigger team in Russia and he took me with him.
00:16:00
Speaker
But yeah, the identification was just not good enough for me. I need a bit of this feeling that I'm involved and I didn't feel involved too much there, the distance, and I don't really knew the players. That's why I choose in summer 2021 that I want to change teams. And yeah, that's how I ended up in VBORG. Kontak came over last at that time.
00:16:26
Speaker
Yeah, he was the coach in Beeborg and I got in contact with him and from this it developed a bit first just the opponent analysis that was my main task at the beginning.
00:16:40
Speaker
But yeah, now I do basically opponent analysis. I have a lot of player talks mostly when I'm in Vivo because I feel it's always better if you see the players face to face and talk with them about sometimes also their mistakes, which is on the video sometimes a bit not that good.
00:16:59
Speaker
Yeah, but I also work on implementing our KPIs and developing some new ideas. We have one other analyst, a student who films the games, which is quite good because when I'm not in VBORG, that's the thing I cannot do. I cannot film from Germany. That's not possible at the moment. So he films our games so that we have a backup if our provider of the League picture, sometimes it's quite bad so that we have at least a backup.
Analytical Evolution at V-Borg
00:17:29
Speaker
our filming and yeah that's our status crew i am now it's incredible the power that twitter can have sometimes and i know that Lars Freis has a twitter account so maybe maybe he saw uh some of your visualizations back in the day and uh and that was the catalyst but yeah incredible that that's how it started for you and it certainly sounds like you've got your hands full at vborg i wondered when you are there how much of your role takes place on the training field versus behind a laptop
00:17:58
Speaker
Yeah, it's quite a lot. So I'm always saying also to our staff that I'm really missing coaching. You know, when I coach for a good six years or seven years, even though it was quite an exhausting time, I still loved it. And I have my A license, so I have really a high coaching batch. So it's wasted at the moment because I don't do any coaching work at all because I cannot not have the time to coach in Germany anymore at the moment.
00:18:24
Speaker
So I try to be on the pitch as often as possible and my role is not this classic data analyst guy who is just sitting in front of his laptop and works with numbers. I'm not that guy. I'm not good at
00:18:39
Speaker
Yeah i'm not a data scientist i always say i'm more like a technical analyst this is also why i'm i spend a lot of time observing observing the training observing some. Some games without really doing something it's not like that i give technical advice during a game that's not my.
00:19:00
Speaker
Sometimes I could do it if I really see something. I do it, but it's not my main priority. It's more like observing where can we get better and what can we improve. So that's also part of your work. You're not, as an analyst, it's not like an eight hour full-time job a day where you just sit there and do stuff every minute. It's a lot of creative thinking, thinking a bit outside of the box. I watch a lot of football. That's also part of it.
00:19:28
Speaker
to watch other teams, what is the elite teams in Europe doing. And then when I see some interesting trends, I download it, I visualize it a bit and show it to the staff and to the players, but also a lot of small talk. So it's not that every talk I have with the players is always about analyzing stuff. It's sometimes just about getting a feeling of, I like to, even when I'm in Germany, I like to write some players just on WhatsApp that they give me
00:19:58
Speaker
Just a small summary of what against Midi Land after the Midi Land game I wrote like two or four players to give me just that I had a feeling why it happened because it was hard to To touch because I felt we were not the worst team on this day at least not four gods worse than Midi Land but it's sometimes hard if you're not in the stadium to get a grip of the atmosphere of the momentum and
00:20:22
Speaker
So that's what I like to do to get a bit of the players because they are more intelligent than some people think, especially in our squad.
Comparing Super League with Top Leagues
00:20:29
Speaker
We have a lot of highly intelligent people that you can just ask about your opinion, what they thought, what was the reason why we lost or why we won.
00:20:40
Speaker
There was something, as you were talking there, that triggered in my memory, which is that I was fortunate enough to see V-Borg and Silkeborg in the Europa League this season in the UK. And after both games, it was interesting that I think it was Yeppe for V-Borg and Kent Nielsen for Silkeborg. But both said the big difference between us on the pitch was down to individual technical quality. It wasn't to do with
00:21:09
Speaker
What create wasn't to do with i don't know i'm tactics it came down to that and i wanted when you're looking at the difference between a super leaguer team and say a premier league team what is it from a technical perspective that is most where the gap is most is it is it first touch is it finishing ability be really interesting to know.
00:21:29
Speaker
Yeah, it's actually a good question because I feel if you just watch the games, it starts already with you. If you watch women's football, because nowadays the women's football on a technical level, a technical level has so much improved that on the first few, it's not that easy to see the differences. But of course, the differences between the Super League and the Premier League, for example, is
00:21:51
Speaker
the game speed and what happens in your brain, how quickly you can recognize new situations, how quickly you can find solutions. That's the one thing which is probably hard to analyze because it's quite a soft topic. But, and I was in London when we played West Ham, you would think that every professional football player is the best version of himself.
00:22:17
Speaker
If you talk about athleticism, no. If you watch the West Ham, I don't say that the Super League players, they are not trained or they are not putting so much work into it. But if you see players like Michael Antonio, if you see Skamaka from West Ham, if you see them really face to face, you just think, who is that? They are like machines.
00:22:41
Speaker
And if you then look at Super Liga players, it's a big, big difference. There are also some players in the Super Liga that look a bit like a freak body-wise, but on the highest level, also physically, there is a big, big difference. The goal that we conceded against West Ham, the first goal, Skamakar, he just out-jumped our center-backs because he just has a higher jumping reach. And this probably was a good example of goals that you could not defend
00:23:09
Speaker
because you cannot defend every cross, that's not possible. And then if the cross comes in and someone is just higher than you and he just jumps higher, that's individual quality.
00:23:20
Speaker
Yeah, that's probably the thing that you have to deal with. That doesn't mean that you cannot beat them. I think we competed well, also against teams with a bigger quality than we got. But of course, Midtieland was also a good example of the goals that they scored. That's quality, that's individual quality from Isakson.
00:23:40
Speaker
that you have to deal sometimes with it. It doesn't mean that we were not totally disappointed after the game, but sometimes you need to swallow the pill that if the opponent has a good day and they score some goals from a low XG value, some deflection goals and some long range goals, then sometimes you need to accept it. You don't need to improve it.
00:24:03
Speaker
That makes sense. Awesome. And I don't know whether your role existed before you arrived, but I was interested to know how has the kind of the setup at Veeble changed under the new ownership just from a, from a scouting, a coaching, an analysis perspective.
00:24:19
Speaker
Yeah, so actually the role didn't exist. So I was the first analyst at Weeborg, which was a good thing on the one hand, because it's still today, I have a lot of influence for an analyst, I would say. So there are a lot of analysts, they are just filming the games or they're just like tagging, which was probably would not be my favorite part because I've
00:24:41
Speaker
Yeah, I would not really feel valued in this role. So for me, it's really like I have a lot of, I can talk with the coaches about technical ideas and so on. I have close contact with the players, which is also not automatically if you're an analyst, some analysts, they never talk to the players at all.
00:24:56
Speaker
So this was the good thing that we didn't really had a set up. The bad thing obviously is that we had to start from the scratch with software, with hardware. So before we had now the student filming the games, we didn't had an own camera system. So we were reliant on the super leaguer on our providers to film the games. They do it. That's good. But reliance is never a good thing. And for a football club, you need to suddenly, time after time, be a bit more independent.
00:25:26
Speaker
And that's at the moment, I would say, our main target to get more independent of everything. We want to have our own camera system. We want to have our own data. Yeah. And we invested a lot, I would say, in the last few months. We invested in some new providers. We work now together with Impact. That's a German company. They provide us with packing data, which is a bit like, how many players do you bypass? Just like where we were simple.
00:25:56
Speaker
And that's why we work with some other companies that we've brought on board. So that's basically the biggest change. But also I would say the acceptance, because you can imagine if the players, they never had an analyst at the club. And when I first joined,
00:26:16
Speaker
Maybe they were a bit shy because, okay, what is this guy doing? Is he just criticizing us? Is he more like helping us? And I think time after time when they got to know me better and to know that I'm not an analyst just for the sake of it. I want in the end, we are all there for making.
00:26:34
Speaker
the team better on match day. And I think they realized it quite soon. And so I think now my role is just, it's just part of the, of the coaching stuff. You could say a bit of an advanced coaching stuff. And I think this acceptance is maybe the thing that changed the most because of course, if you never had an analyst at your club, it's at first, it's more like, what is he doing? How can you help us?
Adapting to New Management at V-Borg
00:26:58
Speaker
But the more you get involved and the more tasks you got,
00:27:01
Speaker
you feel more valued after time after time and this is good. Interesting. That focus on having a strong analytical setup. I've noticed a couple of times, I've been at Michelin games this season and I've never seen so many people with laptops kind of sitting, sitting doing stuff during the game. So I think that they're quite well known as being a team that embraced this early on. But I think that
00:27:28
Speaker
you can see from where you guys are in the table and from what happened last season, the effect of this kind of new focus. And it's obviously not just one thing, it's a combination of things, but it's been really amazing to see a team with a budget like Veeble competing at the top of the table. Yeah, and I think, yeah, you know, maybe you saw it on Twitter, I also like to have some, yeah, some
00:27:56
Speaker
fluent contact to some of our fans because I feel that they also play an important role and it's not like that I feel I must interact with them. It's not like this, it's more like that I like to do it because I feel that the fans point of view, it's an important one. It's maybe not the one that is the most valued by a lot of teams or coaches or players because
00:28:19
Speaker
Obviously I need to listen to the coaches more than to the fans, but it's still an important aspect. If the fans have, you know, you need to at least be transparent. And that's why I don't, I'm not shy to sometimes share some
00:28:32
Speaker
tactical ideas that we had in the game when it didn't work out or share some data of our games, because I feel that the fans, they are much more intelligent when it comes to football than most people think. At least the ones that I know from our club, they know a lot about data, a lot about analysis, so you cannot just
00:28:51
Speaker
I just played them. And some of them, they already told me, since you are here in the club, it's all going up. And I told them, yeah, but it probably just was a good time to join because I think there are many, many more reasons. Yes, of course. I know that I'm one part of the success, a tiny part, but I play my part
00:29:17
Speaker
The same way how our Kidman plays his part, because everything is set, because on a match day it's so important that the players can follow their routines. And so it's very much underrated all these stuff that happens behind. But it's also for us, you mentioned the table. We always know where we're coming from. And we are really, probably you noticed that when you talk to Jepel and to Clint and to some other people that we really know where we're coming from. We never try to be arrogant or anything.
00:29:47
Speaker
But of course we know that we are in situations where we should probably not look to other teams and automatically try to copy what they are doing. Why do we need eight analysts?
00:30:00
Speaker
when teams who got eight analysts are below us at the table. I know it's just a momentum at the moment can change in two or three weeks, but we are in a situation where we're doing so well over two years now that we need to build our own strategy and not just look at what is Copenhagen doing, what is Midland doing and say, okay, we copy that. They do a lot of good stuff, but not everything we need to copy because we are doing well and we should try to improve in our own way and don't copy other teams too much.
00:30:30
Speaker
Programs like All or Nothing that really give you a peek behind the curtain of what it's like at a professional club. Watching the Arsenal one this summer, it was quite a prominent analyst there who was having these one-on-one sessions with players and it seemed like
00:30:46
Speaker
the relationships were a really big part of it and his relationship with the manager. And I know that when you arrived, you arrived under Lars Freis and you're obviously now working with Jacob Freis. How did that sort of managerial transition, how did you go about building your relationship and building your value with the new manager?
00:31:07
Speaker
Yeah, I think that I was really tensed when he called me at 11 in the evening on the day when he got, you know, not got fired, but when this all happened. So he called me, I was lying in bed and he said, okay, Maryse, I want that you are one of the guys who know at first that I probably won't be coach at V-book from now on.
00:31:29
Speaker
was a bit of a shock because, you know, he brought me there and of course I had a really good relationship with him. So I knew that with Fred Berg as a sporting director, I was sure that the new coach shares the same philosophy at least, but I was never sure if the new coach has maybe brings his own stuff. That's normal in modern football. So I was a bit tense even though that our sporting director caught me immediately telling me, yeah, it's nothing will change for you.
00:32:00
Speaker
But yeah, with Jakob then it turned out to be really a lucky case because we have exactly the same, I would say, idea of football and also the same, a similar way how to work. So when we were in Alicante and we had this training camp, we had a mental coach who was there, Camilla, she made a presentation, a workshop about this
00:32:23
Speaker
Yeah, this personality roles, I think you maybe heard of it. It's like every person can be divided into four personalities, the red one, the green one. I think everyone has done it already in his job. And it turned out that me and Jakob, we
00:32:41
Speaker
Yeah, we show what the right word is, but we compliment, I would say, each other quite well because he's a guy, sometimes he writes or calls me late in the evening and just tells me, Harris, can you find me a picture of Man City pressing against the back three?
00:33:00
Speaker
And then I do it because for me I could say I know 10 in the evening I'm not working anymore but for me it's it's part of my it's it's a fluent between job and private life I love football it's my passion so I have no problem doing it if I would be rather the rational guy who is just the numbers guy
00:33:18
Speaker
I probably had a bigger problem with it because then I need to plan everything and I can't work with someone calling me spontaneously at 10 in the evening and asking me for something. I would be like, oh no, Man City, I'm not sure what game, what you see. I'm not like this. I do it in 10 minutes. I send him a clip and he's happy. So I think that this is part of our good relationship that he knows how I work. I know how he works.
00:33:46
Speaker
It's even so, if I do the opponent analysis, I tend to have a video call with the coaching stuff and present it, share my screen, show it in the presentation and then talk over the videos. But you know, in football, time is gold and this meeting, sometimes it took one hour and they need to arrange it that every coach is available.
00:34:08
Speaker
And for eight or nine weeks now, we basically just sent them the presentation and they know exactly what to add into the illustration that they understand it without that I don't need to talk about it. And that's how we always try to optimize processes because when I'm in Germany, that's the most important thing. You need to simplify stuff.
00:34:33
Speaker
and to optimize stuff because otherwise it's not working. Jakob should never have the feeling that he cannot ask me because it's from an organizational point of view not possible to ask me. So that's what I try to tell him that he can handle me as a normal employer who is sitting in his office just that I'm not there physically and I think it's working fine this way. Great. Yeah, it must be
00:35:02
Speaker
Amazing to have that kind of working relationship where you really feel like you're, what's the word you use, where you're complimenting each other's strengths because I think that's where you feel really valued as an employee, as a coworker, whatever it might be.
00:35:19
Speaker
Yeah. And I also learned a lot from him. I mean, that's a bit of a, you know, of a common saying I learned every day, but yeah, you know, when you, when you start working in professional football and before that I was a coach, yes, but not on a professional level. I was an analyst, but only on Twitter.
00:35:35
Speaker
I thought I knew a lot about football. That's when you when you ask people on Twitter, most people will tell you, I'm an expert. But the stuff that I learned in the last two years, and especially under under Jacob, it's massive. So much not not only football related, but also like soft skills, social skills. So, so much at the moment when I would start coaching again,
00:36:01
Speaker
I would coach my team exactly the way that Yakov coach us at the mall because I know it's working. So, you know, all the principles and the style of play and how to get there and how to talk to the players. Yeah, that's a really, really good thing about him. And I would be dumb to not try to soak it in and also adapt it to my work.
Balancing Data and Video in Analysis
00:36:26
Speaker
I don't want to copy anyone, but it's the good things. It's always good to try to adapt them.
00:36:32
Speaker
I'm such a big football fan, but I'm not able to watch games in the same way as people who can really, I don't know, pick apart the patterns. I listened to an Arsenal podcast called Arsenal Vision where they analyze games and I've seen the exact same game and they've seen it in a completely different way, but it's so enlightening. And I just wondered, are you able to watch a game just as entertainment or are you always seeing tactical patterns and watching it with a kind of work hat on?
00:36:59
Speaker
And that's probably a question that I get asked every time when people talk to me because I think it's like, and it's hard to answer because on the one hand, yes, I feel that I'm still at the point where I can do it. So for example, today when, when Parisa Jean-Marc plays Bayern Munich, I was just hoping for a good game with a lot of goals and some individual quality for Mbappe or Messi. So I can really enjoy individual quality without any technical borders. I can, I can do that. And I think.
00:37:31
Speaker
It's good to have that because otherwise I think the burnout rate would be quite high in the next two or three years. And I also don't like, maybe when you follow my tweets, I don't like these people on Twitter especially at the moment who try to make football more complicated than it is like all these
00:37:52
Speaker
these academic terms about some technical routines that basically exist for 10 years, then they give them a new name and they sell it like a new trend. That's not how football should be analyzed.
00:38:07
Speaker
So yeah, I can still watch a normal football game with my friends, even though I don't have too much time to meet them. But yeah, I try to ignore all the stuff. It's not always working, but yesterday I watched Borussia Dortmund against Chelsea.
00:38:23
Speaker
First 10 minutes, 15 minutes, I watched a bit of the structure and build up and pressing because I think it was quite interesting. But the last 20 minutes when it was really tense, I just watched it and I forgot that I'm an analyst and it's probably my job to analyze it. No, I tried to divide it a bit as long as that's still possible.
00:38:43
Speaker
It sounds like you have a mix of using your eyes and using the statistics and sort of finding what makes sense out of those two inputs rather than just focusing too much on one or another. But I wondered, is there such thing as a leading indicator from a statistical perspective? Like, is there a stat or a series of stats that are more important than others when it comes to analyzing a game?
00:39:04
Speaker
Yeah, so for us, we have our KPIs that we look at, it's bypass components, that's PPDA, so pressing indicators. That's also how many final third entries we got, how many XG we generate. That's all that we look for. So that's basically when we evaluate our own game, we look at these KPIs or how many runs
00:39:27
Speaker
behind the back line we make. So because we want to have these deep runs, that's everything that we look at. We also looked at obviously our opponents, how much do they do of the same stuff. But yes, I would say that my work is 70 or 80% video reliant. So I use the data to confirm what I see.
00:39:51
Speaker
But I hardly have a focus on the data because I feel that if you have the joys, it's always, video is always better. Data can give you lots of, sometimes when I watch a team that I don't know, which is not happening a lot in Denmark, because you just have 12 teams. So it was quite a funny stat that we have now 12 games left and six of them are against the Nordschieland and Copenhagen, which is crazy to think about 50% of our remaining games are against two teams.
Future Roles and Influence of Analysis
00:40:21
Speaker
probably the best in the league. So yeah, you can you can guess the second or third time we play a team, I don't make like the biggest report and the biggest presentation anymore, because what should I tell the players and the coaches about this team, that it's more about finding solutions more than than than analyzing the structure and analyzing their data. It's more about
00:40:44
Speaker
How can we find solutions? Then it's more like yeah, that's more what how does how the season develops first part of the season? It's more some teams they change formation in a new season. It's really a lot about How high do they press data comes in or what what build-up structure do they use? But the more the season goes on it's rather about Finding solutions that then analyzing the team because we know how not say that is playing there would be more
00:41:12
Speaker
I probably think they won't surprise us with a new system on Sunday. So it's more about how can we hurt them. Awesome. I was also going to ask about how the advent of platforms like YScout have changed the game for, I don't know, for your role, but also for scouts, managers, whoever else at the club.
00:41:32
Speaker
Yeah, it makes it easier. Obviously, we don't work with Weiskot too much because obviously we have the tactical cam in our second spectrum software. This is provided by the SuperLiga. So if you one time work with the tactical cam where you can see every player at once, you don't want to go back to the broadcasting angle because it's so different. But it makes life much, much easier. I told you we have the student filming the games.
00:42:01
Speaker
He also takes some situations because for halftime analysis, but in the end, it's really more like a backup work. We don't need to take our own games because we have everything in our platform automatically. I can filter everything. If I want to see every pass from Japet to Bonde in the middle zone of the pitch,
00:42:23
Speaker
Just between minutes 60 and 75, I can filter it and I get every pass that I look for. If I want to see every pressing situation of Nordschieland in the last three weeks, make one click and I see that. It makes it much, much easier, of course. That's a luxury thing that a lot of teams on the lower level don't have. I was at the analysis convention of a football summit in the start of January.
00:42:52
Speaker
And I talked to a lot of analysts from smaller clubs and of course in the third division in Denmark, you don't have that. You don't have technical cams of games and you don't have big stadiums. So you cannot really have a good angle if you frame it yourself. These guys, they do a much harder stuff than I do. That's the truth, the reality.
00:43:10
Speaker
But of course I enjoy doing it because then you can focus on your job, analyzing and finding solutions and not finding clips. Finding clips should not be the main part of your work, but some teams it is because if you don't have these softwares available, you spend a lot of time in the hard work, in the grinding part, and you can't spend so much in analyzing.
00:43:34
Speaker
I do sometimes think if you were able to time travel and bring something like, bring that level of analysis back into the 90s when they still had just VHS, I wonder how far you could take a team. Yeah, I do some, you know, in my other job in Germany, I make some analysis articles for the German Football Association for their academy side and I'm quite free. So I can do analysis of
00:44:00
Speaker
of all the teams that I want to do. And we had like a flashback series in the last three months. So I analyzed United 99 with Ferguson. I analyzed Marinius FC Porto. And going back on YouTube, watching these videos, I tried to analyze them out of this shit quality broadcasting that was
00:44:20
Speaker
I told my boss, I don't do that again because it was so, so hard if you're used to have better quality pictures and better angles. But yeah, but that's what it was for many years.
00:44:31
Speaker
Is there a player you have in mind who you think has really flourished from some of the work that you've been doing with them and you've really seen a marked improvement over your time working together? Yeah, that's probably hard to answer because I cannot look into their minds. But yeah, just to give you maybe a small anecdote, my first meeting ever with a player, it was with Eunice Bakis. He's now in Arborg, so I can maybe talk about him.
00:44:58
Speaker
I was really shy and afraid because you know I'm coming from youth football as a coach I've never done any analysis work with players and I thought okay why should they listen to someone who never played himself professional and why should they even rate my opinion and then we had this talk 10-15 minutes I talked a bit about him you know why he's not scoring and assisting as much as he wants to and I told him a bit about his positioning showed him some clips some data about his touches in the final third
00:45:29
Speaker
And then, okay, he said, thank you. And it was a good fight, but I could not guarantee if he was just, you know, he was just kindness to save my face. And then on the next day, our physio came to me and he told me, what have you done with Eunice? And I thought, why? I had just a 10 minute talk with him. And he said, yeah, he came to me afterwards and he said, ah, it was such a good talk with Meris and he really showed me
00:45:55
Speaker
that my feeling was right about that I could you know do this and that better and it was really opening my eyes that I could could see it in the data and an eclipse that my feeling got confirmed and that obviously gave me a lot of confidence in my in my talks and but if I should name a player from now maybe I think yep it's it's maybe the the more the most
00:46:21
Speaker
the normal answer because he's basically learning from everything you tell him.
Cultural Reflections and Podcast Conclusion
00:46:25
Speaker
But yeah, because I think that he never really worked on his game as much as he worked in the last two years on his game from the coaches, from everyone, also from me. I think that for him, everything that you tell him has an effect. Not everything he's doing, because sometimes he thinks maybe it's not benefiting me. But when I tell him, yep, you need to
00:46:46
Speaker
You need to try to position yourself a bit more between the lines. There is a high, high chance that when you watch his next game, he's doing it. So I think if you talk about how quickly you can see the effect of your work, Yap is quite a good example because you can really see when you talk to him, the next two weeks he tries to do it. And there's obviously a really good feeling for an analyst too that it's not just like empty words that you tell the players.
00:47:14
Speaker
But they're acting on it. Yeah. Yeah. And, but if you, uh, if you go back and listen to episode one of Danish Dynamite, we had the Epe on the podcast. And one of the things he said was I sometimes think that if I was able to do the things that I've been doing in the past few years and the things that I've learned earlier in my career, like where.
00:47:31
Speaker
What where it could have led where it could have taken me and yeah I think that's a testament to the work you and the the coaching staff and the manager doing there finally I wanted to ask really about Denmark and the Super League I wondered how much you knew about the country and the league before working there and what your what your takeaway is from it now, you know, have you have you got to have you got to love v-borg as a place if you have you fallen in love with the league and
00:47:56
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. I feel that some people think it might be crazy that I really identify a lot with the club. I got a V-Bog tattoo, I got a lot of V-Bog stuff in my house decorated, and I love the club, which is not, you know, it's a bit crazy to say because I've never been there for more than two weeks in a row until April, three weeks. But
00:48:21
Speaker
The culture in the club and also in the country is so different from Germany. In Germany, we have a lot of people try to do their own stuff and they're not happy when other people got success. And I think in Denmark, it's a really open culture.
00:48:39
Speaker
look back at the football summit that I attended in January. There were all the analysts, the background stuff of the teams in Denmark. And they were all freely talking to each other, sharing ideas and making workshops, which is not normal. Now I told you about the quality of the providers' tactical camp pictures, this shit for some stadiums. And then Copenhagen analyst, he made a drop box for all the teams they want to join.
00:49:09
Speaker
and all the analysts can upload their own videos in there so that we have some better quality pictures to analyze our next opponent. This is not normal. Why should Copenhagen have enough cameras? They have enough analysts. Why should they care about the other teams if they don't have the pictures? It's not normal and I really appreciate this and I think that's part of the Danish culture.
00:49:31
Speaker
And non-football related, it's the same. So I like Denmark. That's why I want to move there sometimes. So we are in talks about me moving full-time to Wieberg for many months now. But yeah, like I always say, it's not that easy for me to just quit my job in Germany and get into this full-time role right from now to tomorrow.
00:49:53
Speaker
It probably will come at one point because I love Denmark as a country and my girlfriend too, so we could well imagine living there. So yeah, for me, it's a perfect fit that was quite random because what you asked, no, I didn't know a lot about Denmark. I didn't know a lot about the Super Liga. What I can tell you now is that the Super Liga is much, much better than the UEFA ranking. I think a lot of leagues that are in front of the Super Liga, they're just in front because they have one
00:50:22
Speaker
poster team that a bit carries them through to the rankings, like you got Donetsk in the Ukraine, you got Petersburg in Russia, you got Celtic in Scotland, you got Salzburg in Austria, but the general level of the football in the league, the Super League, is at least the same, if not higher. That's what I noticed. You have such a high, high average level in the Super League.
00:50:47
Speaker
that it makes really fun to analyze the games, because you know it best themselves. So many good football teams, Selgeborg, Nordschieland, OB, they all know how to play football. And it's really fun to analyze these games if you compare it to Russia, where there is a lot of pragmatic football, long ball, second ball approach.
00:51:08
Speaker
It's hard to analyze, but when you play Nordschieland on the weekend, there's so much stuff that you can analyze that is really also on this part of the game. It makes just more fun to work in the Super League and maybe the league where the football is not that much quality.
00:51:23
Speaker
I've never made a clip of the podcast, but I'm going to try and clip that up and tag the Superleaguer and that can be their new marketing campaign. Yeah, but it's true. You know, a lot of people are just seeing the UEFA rankings and they see, okay, there's no team at the Champions League. Yes, but why? It's more like because we don't have this big, big, big club that had success in Europe in the last few years. Midi line had some at the Champions League, but also more like temporary.
00:51:50
Speaker
And then Copenhagen, they struggle a bit in Europe, Brent, we struggle and we need that one team that really goes into the knockout stages every season. We need that. That's true. It's good that we are, at the moment, so good. It's good that Zuckerberg is so good. It's good that Nordchen is so good.
00:52:06
Speaker
But you cannot expect a team like Wieberg to get a run through all the qualification rounds every season. That's so, so hard. We saw that now. We went to the first two rounds and then West Ham, it was a dead end for us. So we need at least one or two safe places on the table that qualify for Europe safe and don't go to the qualification rounds. That must be an aim because otherwise it's so, so hard to get higher.
00:52:32
Speaker
Yeah, that West Ham draw was probably the hardest one you could have got as well from the teams that were available in that round. So it's just one of those things. But I think that VBorg still came out of it with plenty of credit, although I guess credit doesn't get you group games. But at the same time, I think it registered on a lot of people's radars.
00:52:50
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. For us, it was a good experience and I think everyone gave us credit. But like I said, we didn't gain a lot of points for the UEFA ranking. Yeah, it's a problem on a long term for the league. And finally, Marius, you've got your UEFA A license. It sounds like you really enjoy the relationship side of the role. You obviously got an in-depth tactical and analysis background. Does this mean you're going to be a manager in the future? Is that how you see things panning out? Yeah, hopefully I think that that's
00:53:17
Speaker
That is the thing that if I could draw the future, I would see myself in a bit of a hybrid role, a bit like Grady Maric was at Leeds, a bit like being an assistant coach in some way, but with an analysis focus. So because I really miss being on the pitch, that's the reality and the coaches, they know it. And so when we discuss a potential full-time role in the near future, we probably also need to talk about
00:53:46
Speaker
My role, because like I told you, during the training, there is not so much stuff that an analyst can do. It's not like that I need to analyze every simple training session. So then maybe it's part of my work to make some individual coaching stuff with some players, maybe in this way. So this would be my ideal role, but let's see. But yeah, like I said, I don't see myself as a pure analyst for the next 50 years now.
00:54:11
Speaker
So watch this space. Brilliant. Marius, thank you so much for your time. I know how busy you are. So really, really grateful that you took the time to speak to me and it was fascinating. If you want to follow Marius, head on over to Twitter at Gegenpressing91. We've obviously got a clop aficionado here. Used to be one, but not anymore.
00:54:35
Speaker
But yeah, please do follow Marius. He's so open and interesting on Twitter. And I think Twitter can be a goldmine for interesting football stuff if you are open to looking for it. And Marius is a perfect example of that. So thank you again, Marius, and really appreciate your time. Same. And thank you for all your work. I think you're doing a great job making the Super Liga a bit more open to the mainstream. That's really important also for us. Fantastic. Cheers. And I'll catch you next time.
00:55:04
Speaker
That's all we've got time for, for this episode, but I'd like to thank Marius very much for his time and like to thank all of you for tuning into another episode of Danish Dynamite, the Super League of Podcasts.
00:55:15
Speaker
As ever, I'm super grateful to those of you who have supported the show by becoming a Patreon. Again, if you would like to become one of those luminaries, you can head over to patreon.com forward slash football in Denmark. And for the price of a coffee a month, you can help support the show, help support the website and help keep the content tap on for English based Danish Super League of content.
00:55:37
Speaker
I will catch you next week for a run through of round 21 and more exciting tidbits from the Danish Super League.