Yesterday Aspire Academy hosted two high powered delegations from FIFA’s Digital Transformation and Innovation Division and the Chengdu Football Association from China who toured Aspire during their visit to Qatar.
The FIFA delegation included Carlo Torniai, Director Strategy, Planning & Digital Ventures House at FIFA, Benjamin Stoll, Director Business Technology & Innovation House and Michael Broughton, Senior Adviser - Business Technology, Innovation & Investment Strategy at FIFA while GU Jianming, Executive Committee Member of Chinese Football Association and President of Chengdu Football Association led the delegation that included, XIONG Yan, Director of Chengdu Sports Bureau, CAO Xu, the Deputy Director of General Affair Department of Chengdu Sports Bureau and FAN Fangyuan, Deputy General Secretary and Director of International Relations Department of Chengdu Football Association.
Aspire Academy Director of Sport and Strategy, Markus Egger, welcomed both delegations before going on to lead the tour of the Academy complex. The FIFA team showed huge interest with the state-of-the-art technology that was presented to them in the Football Performance Center and further explained in a video call with Valter di Salvo, Director of Football Performance & Science at Aspire Academy.
“I am really impressed. I am coming from a strong background in data and artificial intelligence. Besides the impressive facilities that you have here, I was really struck by the way you are using data and technology. Not only by how you shape and make sense of training data, but also by the way you build the learning context that is required for you to succeed,” said Carlo Torniai, who joined FIFA from Pirelli where he was the Director for Digital Product Development, as well the Director for Data Science and Analytics.
Talking about the influence of the digital transformation in sports, he stressed the importance of this movement in many areas. “Using data and using advanced technology forces a cultural change that I think is very much needed, not only in sports. In my experience in different industries – I have done digital transformation at Pirelli and I used to work at Tesla before joining FIFA – I think that the real power for what we call digital transformation is not only in technology, but in the interaction of technology and the way of thinking – if you want the tension of the forces of cultural change, which I think is very much needed, particularly in sports.”
Torniai also mentioned the importance that digital transformation and innovation are going to have for the 2022 FIFA World Cup. “The aim is to make a very technology driven event that serves our fan-base and I think it’s going to be crucial how we can leverage technology and data to do this better,” Torniai said.
Meanwhile, GU Jianming, Executive Committee Member of Chinese Football Association and President of Chengdu Football Association, congratulated Qatar on winning the 2019 AFC Asian Cup and described the victory as sensational and confirmation of the astute long term planning and a successful football development programmes that are well defined by the work done at Aspire Academy.
“First let me congratulate Qatar on your victory in the 2019 Asian Cup as well as winning the bid to host 2022 FIFA World Cup. Our visit to Qatar has left us with great impressions of the country and the good work been done in youth sport development and coaching. We want to enhance our cooperation and partnership with Qatar Football Association, Aspire Academy and Aspetar in football development,” Jianming said.
“We look forward to welcoming Qatar youth team next year to the 7th edition of the Panda Cup, the international youth association football competition that we run in annually in Chengdu. Chinese teams have held their winter break training camps at Aspire in the past and we look forward to more teams from China continuing with this trend and when it’s too hot in Qatar, we would like Qatari teams to come to train in Chengdu too.”
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