Flamengo is modernizing its data infrastructure in partnership with BlueShift and Google Cloud. The project organizes match and player information to expand analytics capabilities and support the coaching staff’s decisions.
The initiative uses an architecture that facilitates the processing of statistics and prepares the club to incorporate artificial intelligence applications in the future.
The centralized platform provides strategic reports to assist the coaching staff with tactical preparation and the study of opponents. – Image: Sinrich Sydnes/Shutterstock
Lakehouse and BigQuery organize football data
During the 90 minutes of a match, more than 3,000 on-field events are recorded, including passes, shots, and touches of the ball. To turn this volume of information into useful analyses, the project separated the ingestion and analysis flows and centralized the analytical environment in BigQuery, a Google Cloud service.
The modernization also involved building a lakehouse architecture, which combines the storage and analysis of large volumes of data in an integrated environment. The information is organized into layers, from the original records to processed data that is ready for querying.
In practice, this structure enables the coaching staff to work with different athlete performance indicators. Analysis possibilities include:
- Comparing player performance metrics;
- Tracking the individual and collective development of athletes;
- Identifying individual and collective patterns in matches.
The solution also took into account the tools and skills already used by the club’s professionals, making it easier to adopt the platform in their day-to-day work.
Data helps guide coaching staff decisions
With information organized, analysts can explore different scenarios and provide input for sports planning. The platform also offers secure environments for consulting and analyzing data, with control over resources and costs.
According to Esteban Huerta, a Google Cloud specialist at BlueShift, the main challenge is turning large volumes of records into useful information for football.
“The differentiator lies not only in gathering large volumes of data, but in transforming them into information that supports more assertive decisions,” he explains.
The solution was designed to incorporate Vertex AI in the future, enabling statistics and images to be cross-referenced without rebuilding the system. – Image: vectorfusionart/Shutterstock
Artificial intelligence is in the plans for the future
The infrastructure was also prepared to allow the future incorporation of artificial intelligence applications through Vertex AI, Google Cloud’s platform. The proposal is to combine statistics, images, and other types of information to expand analytical capabilities without requiring the existing structure to be rebuilt.
This stage still represents a possibility for the project’s evolution.Huerta says that the technological foundation was designed to keep up with new demands and allow Flamengo to adopt more advanced tools without having to rebuild its infrastructure for every new need.
Valdir Antonelli is a journalist specializing in digital marketing and consumer behavior.
