Soccermatics Courses

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. It is taught by Soccermatics author David Sumpter, with guest lectures from world-leading practitioners and researchers working with data in football. This year the course contents are revised to reflect rapid developments in AI in football.

This year we are welcoming participants already working in the industry and those with other backgrounds looking to make a move into the football industry or learn more.

Course contents

Course start September 23rd

Part 1: Match, season and scouting reports.

1.1: Using event and tracking data to understand a match.

1.2: Scouting with data.

1.3: Creating match and player visualisations in Python. 

Part 2: Machine learning

2.1: Introduction to machine learning in football.

2.2: Using the expected goals properly.

2.3 Expected threat and advanced machine learning models. 

Part 3: Large language models: how to automate report writing.

3.1 What ChatGPT can and can’t do. Prompt engineering. 

3.2 Summarising scouting reports and other structured data.

3.4 Combining data with scouting reports . 

Part 4: Understanding player fitness data and player movements.

4.1: Different types of tracking and physical data and how to use it.

4.2: Using tracking data to assess player and team performance.

4.3: The future of AI in football.

Learning approach

The unique aspect of this course is that David Sumpter and your tutors are there every step of the way. There is a live tutorial with David, every Monday 5pm CET. Tutorial's filmed if you miss them. We have guest lectures by leading club data scientists (previously we have had guests from Arsenal, Atalanta, English FA, Rangers and other footballing organisations).

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 and can help with your own club-related problems.

The price for eight week Soccermatics Pro course is 1600 euros.

  • 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.

  • 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.,

Leagues and national organisations which have benefitted from our 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 Monday 23rdSeptember 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

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.

Twelve Community

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.