Soccermatics Courses
We offer two different professional courses on data in football
Our flagship, eight-week Soccermatics Pro, runs once a year and is the most comprehensive education available on how to work with football data in Python.
'Next course start is 2nd September 2024.
Soccermatics Pro
We also offer Soccermatics Tailored for clubs and footballing organisations who want to increase the skillset in football analytics. We work around your schedule to provide a tailor-made solution for your staff. Both online and on-site courses are possible.
Soccermatics Tailored
Read more on each course below.
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All courses led by David Sumpter
David Sumpter is a Professor of applied mathematics and author of the book and course Soccermatics. He advises sporting directors, scouts, managers, TV presenters, and even players. David has more than twenty years experience teaching statistical methods and mathematical modelling.
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Our tutors are football data scientists
Nicole Kozlova is course organiser, professional footballer for FC Vorskla and the Ukrainian National team and works on Twelve’s statistical models. Jernej Flisar is Twelve's chief data scientist. He has created hundreds of different metrics for both clubs and TV broadcasters. Ágúst Pálmason Morthens is a specialist in scouting and coach recruitment. Dr Pegah Rahimian specialises in machine learning models and tracking data.,
Soccermatics Pro
You will learn how to understand the game using mathematics, statistics and machine learning. It offers the technical skills, in Python, needed to work as a data scientist at a football club or in the football industry. The course utilises data from leading data providers, including event, tracking and physical data. The course is taught by Soccermatics author David Sumpter, with guest lectures from world-leading practitioners and researchers working with data in football.
Course contents
Week 1: Visualising football data: passes, shots and defensive actions
Week 2: Statistical models and expected goals.
Week 3: Scouting: player metrics and radars.
Week 4: Position-based and action-based Expected threat.
Week 5: Developing team metrics for long-term success.
Week 6: Pitch control and tracking data.
Week 7: Advanced scouting metrics for off-ball movement.
Week 8: Using large language models in football.
Pedagogical approach
Live tutorial with David Sumpter, every Monday 5pm CET. Tutorial's filmed if you miss them.
Small group tutorials and individual help throughout.
Project assignments, which you complete in groups with peers (also working at clubs).
Access to extensive event and tracking data to carry out projects.
Help with your own club-related problems and free consultation with Twelve football staff.
The unique aspect of this course is that David and your tutors are there every step of the way. We guide you through the material during group tutorials (2-5 people in each group) one evening a week to fit your schedule and then through continual one-on-one interactions in Slack.. You work on three exercises (decided with your tutor) over the eight weeks. We give individual feedback on your work throughout.
The price for eight week Soccermatics Pro course is 1600 euros.
Leagues and national organisations which have benefitted from our courses
Soccermatics Tailored
We have given customised courses for the English FA, German DFB, Polish FA, Swedish SvFF and Danish DBU. Additionally, we educate coaching staff, club data scientists, club decision-makers and even players on the use of data in football.
We offer:
Guest lecture by David Sumpter, online or in person.
Intensive course Full or half-day, on-site or online education. Everything you need to know from expecting goals and match reports to data-scouting and using tracking data.
Soccermatics Pro personalised We offer a personalised version of the Pro course, with full access to lectures on video, plus weekly tutorials with one of our data scientists who works with you on the questions that are important to you while you learn along the way.
Contact us for prices.
Football Data with David
We also offer monthly Masterclasses led by David Sumpter where everyone is welcome to join.
Become a member of our Twelve Football Community to get invited to live sessions, Q&A sessions, and invite to our slack community channel.
Testimonials
"My Python coding was a weak area for me, and I really wanted to improve in this so I can be more responsive to the needs of the coach and team. It was a great course, with such useful skills being covered. There are so many analysts working in football, but so much mathematics missing from their skillsets.", Mark Carter, English FA.
“Thank you for all this course does for the community. I'll be joining a Brazilian club as a data scientist in the upcoming weeks, and it is crystal clear that it would not happen without your course.", Rodrigo Salvador, Red Bull Bragantino.
“The course combinated mathematics, programming, and real-life cases from industry experts - along with three obligatory hand-ins in Python. Being able to apply this course to own data sources and develop bespoke metrics makes this course recommendable.”, Simon Eilersen, Football Data Consultant, Danish League.
“If you are interested in Analytics and Football, it's an excellent learning resource and highly recommended.”, Kenny McMillan, Aspire Academy.
“Learned a lot of new things and met incredible people. It was a great experience and I would highly recommend signing up for the course.” Mikha Gabechava, Head Scout, FC Dinamo Tbilisi.
“The course tutor dedicated time to sit with me individually, start from scratch, and write a customised step by step plan to wrangle one of the file formats I provided him. For me, this was going above and beyond his duties and really assisted me as a relative beginner in Python.”, Liam Cody, Pro Solutions Team Lead - APAC & Americas , Statsperform.
"I appreciated the course very much. I recommend it for anyone interested in gaining (additional) knowledge in data science/analysis in their organization.” Martin Vogelbein, Scouting, Match Analysis and Diagnosis, Deutscher Fußball-Bund.
”I enjoyed the course very much. I enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere, in which I was nevertheless able to gain some exciting insights. It was a great opportunity for me to get familiar with event and tracking data in the context of game analysis/scouting. Especially the insight into presenting the results via Python Streamlit was a big game changer for me. We are now establishing this framework at TSG Hoffenheim.” Fabian Rupp, Business Intelligence & Data Analytics, Hoffenheim.
