Koopmeiners, Reijnders, Beukema and Karlsson. The ‘sons’ of the Az Alkmaar model are today among the best performers in our championship. Physically strong players, with good technique and above all with great tactical intelligence. These common qualities are not accidental, but they are the fruit of the philosophy and values proposed by the Dutch club.
The presentation of the Az Alkmaar model
Settembre 2019, World Football Summit, Madrid. UA packed audience awaits the start of the presentation: ‘How AZ Alkmaar became one of Europe’s best talent factories using data’. He takes the floor Marijn Beuker, head of development and performance analysis at the club. In around 40 minutes, the talk touches on some key points and shares some very interesting insights into culture, vision and how Az works with young people to nurture their talent.
It was he who opened the doors to a certain way of evaluating and nurturing talent, a path that AZ continued to follow and which is now part of the club’s identity and vision; according to this theory, talent is made up of technique, physical ability, cognitive ability, attitude and personality. As you can see, it is a fusion between hard e soft skills. «What sets us apart? We don’t buy success, we create it. We believe in making a difference through vision, programs, facts, knowledge and capable staff.”
Anticipate the competition
AZ needs to think ahead, to compensate for the limited budget. In her presentation, Marijn Beuker explicitly says that her task is to ‘imagine what football will be like in ten years’ time’. But long-term planning is a very complex task, especially in football, where decisions are too often subject to short-term results. Match results and league tables are dominated by random events such as own goals, poor refereeing decisions and injuries. RIt requires a perfectly structured organization.
It all started after the disappointing 2013/14 season: Az finished eighth in the Eredivisie, 31 points behind Ajax. Things have to change. On May 17, 2014, Az announces the appointment of Robert Eenhoorn as its new CEO. A rather strange decision. A former professional baseball player leading a football team. A few months later, however, it proved to be the right choice at the right time. As a first move he puts Max Huiberts in charge of the sports area, asking him to rebuild the company’s corporate identity. The key trait of the new management therefore becomes one: producing talent rather than buying it.
Furthermore, on March 17, 2015, the club announced that another legendary figure, coming from the world of baseball, would be part of the company: Billy Beane then becomes an official consultant. Also thanks to him the club’s vision begins to take shape, with data suddenly becoming fundamental. To get a complete overview of a player, for example, AZ starts combining hard data with soft skills, integrating football data with physical, cognitive and psychological tests.
The transformation of the club
It thus becomes an extremely virtuous club, capable of offering very attractive football and which enhances the qualities of its playersin equal measure coming from its own nursery and purchased, strictly at low cost, around the Netherlands and from non-leading leagues.
Today, Az has established itself as a permanent member of the Eredivisie elite, immediately behind the trio of Ajax, PSV and Feyenoord. A gap that was completely filled by the youth sector, among the best in Europe and fresh from winning the Youth League, thanks to scouting work that was as effective as it was unique.
In the season (2019/20), players raised in the club’s academy played 46.9% of the first team’s total minutes, one of the highest percentages in Europe.
Replace whoever leaves
The sales that took place between 2021 and 2022 then gave way to the consolidation of the Az’s finances and the creation of the next step of the project: selling players for significant sums but only after having consolidated the creation of the replacement at home, whether by promoting young people from the now well-launched youth sector or by fishing for players useful to the cause through the use of data. In fact, Az Alkmaar’s scouting investigates contexts where a certain type of football is promoted, in general as consistent as possible with the team’s technical guidelines. Before finalizing the transfers of Boadu, Stengs and Idrissi, in addition to that of Koopmeiners, the AZ observers went to Japan to redeem, from the Nagoya Grampus, Yukinari Sugawara, right back now a cornerstone of the team, and in Sweden to acquire Jesper Karlsson from Elfsborg, just sold to Bologna for 11 millionup to the purchase of Milos Kerkez from Milan, the last major capital gain in chronological terms by the club.
The solutions to replace these outlets are already present at homegiven that Mees de Wit he is ready to occupy the left wing left unattended by Kerkez; the captain of the Under 21 team Wouter Goes he is already ready to take Beukema’s place. The quality with and without the ball of Sven Mijnans they will serve to compensate for Reijnders’ departure.
2023-09-11 15:43:35
#Alkmaar #continues #train #sell #talents #Europe
