Real Club Deportivo  -Espanyol Academy

Testimonial: Xavi Díaz. RCD Espanyol Academy Audiovisuals Director (football, Spain)

Nacsport interviews Xavier Diaz, who is the Audiovisuals Director from Real Club Deportivo Espanyol Academy. This side from the city of Barcelona plays in Spain’s highest football competition, Liga BBVA.

What is your department responsible for?
We are part of our club’s DOR structure (DOR in Spanish stands for “Optimisation and Performance Department”). We have different tasks: on the one hand, we provide audiovisual and analysis support to RCD Espanyol B (which is the second team after the senior side) and, on the other hand, support the other teams of the Academy.

We provide these youth teams with analysis support when coaches require, so they can analyse their own teams. Also, we record training sessions and edit the exercises that identify our philosophy of the game.

Also, we are now creating a video library with matches of our teams and their goals as well.

Why is it so important for a club like yours, which is giving so much importance to youth teams, to have a department like this one?
In the world of football, it is gradually more difficult to be better than other teams. Our audiovisual department is another resource for RCD Espanyol coaches and players to support teams and help players to improve, it also allows us to find out more aspects regarding our rivals. 

One of the most important responsibilities of this department is to provide coaches with images so they can correct their players tactically.

How many people form this department? How’s your week schedule?
There are two of us. We support all the teams by picking up all the audiovisual material in order to work with it at the beginning of the week. In each team, there is also a person responsible for recording matches during the weekend and delivering them to our department. During the week we work with all the matches to make analyses for the next weekend.

Analysis teams are not settled yet in Spain like other countries of the world, but everyday more and more Spanish teams are concerned about this issue. Do you think it is important to use audiovisual information to prepare the athlete nowadays?

Four years ago, when we started with Nacsport to scout our teams and rivals, our own players said “hey, here’s the TV!”. Now this happens no longer. More and more teams are using tools to analyse their performance. 

Audiovisual technology is important because of two aspects: On one hand, the analysis allows you to review matches in order to scout rivals and it also allows you to make better explanations to your players. They get more images than explanations. 

On the other hand, we also have our team’s analysis. Coaches obtain a very important resource to correct game situations or give importance to plays that have not gone so well. Players watch themselves making tactical or technical mistakes and they can then correct them. This task is even more important than the other one, because teams can improve globally.

How can a young player be convinced of the usefulness of this technology?
When you can easily record and analyse a lot of elements involved in a match, we get a very useful tool. In youth teams football concepts are being constantly developed so it’s important for kids to acquire knowledge of the game.

Do you think that applying video analysis workflows to teams have direct influence in wins?
Well, I consider that wins are the product of the work carried out by coaches and players. They are responsible for improvements and applying them in the correct situations. We can only help to see clips, detect mistakes and analyse them to find out solutions.

What advantages do you find in using Nacsport software?
Nacsport facilitates us to analyse matches in an easy and quick manner thanks to the option of editing the template. We can thus make it more intuitive. Nacsport provides us with speed to analyse matches. Without this software, we could not reach everyone.

Personally, I like so much the fact that you can completely edit buttons to create different analysis templates. Moreover, we have the fact that we can draw onto the video, a resource that we use a lot when analysing our teams. 

Is it important for you having our support service? Tell us about your experiences when asking for support from our staff…
In this aspect, I have to say something: the software is amazing, but your attention and support goes beyond the line. During these years, I have had to ask for support when using different formats, but your staff always found a solution the very same day. In this aspect, your mark is an A+++.

Would you recommend Nacsport to other coaches or analysis teams? What would you say to those who are not convinced at all?
Of course I would recommend it. It is a very good tool and, compared with other tools, it is very cheap! Our department sometimes organizes conferences for foreign teams that come to Barcelona in order to know our work and we always show them Nacsport. Without the software, our analysis would not be possible. 

With Nacsport you can organize a match in less than 2 hours. We always recommend the tool to our coaches because Nacsport is very intuitive when using it and it also has a lot of features to make our workflows easier.

I would recommend Nacsport 100%!