Technology is always advancing in everything. Especially recently, with new techniques and challenges being faced, every company or team is trying to be better than another and they must develop their technology to the best of their abilities to do so, with regards to sport it can be pivotal to success or failure as Nevill expalains; 'MA is an important means to gain deep and sustained knowledge of competition sports, thus, being an essential element in the coach's intervention throughout the training process in the selection of factors that lead to performance improvement and therefore to sports success' (Nevill, 2009.26). It would seem technology off the pitch has developed dramatically with greater footage of games and the presentation of them as well as equipment that is ever advancing as Beard explains; 'It isn't only GLT and air-con stadia where football technology has been advancing. From training and playing gear to preventative and rehabilitative medical equipment modern footballers, especially those fortunate enough to be professional, have never been so well equipped' (Beard, 2014:1) .However in my opinion, on the pitch football is a very long way behind most sports like Tennis and rugby where an important decision can be decided through programmes such as Hawk Eye or the technology used in rugby of pausing the game to make a decision whereas in football it is often made on the spot without reviewing the decision through media therfore a lot of decisions are made incorrectly. An external organisation like FIFA or the Football Association (FA) can have a big influence on what rules from a technical aspect can be added to a game. FIFA introduced goal-line technology in the Brazil 2014 World Cup after England had a goal disallowed in the 2010 world cup that had quite clearly crossed the line. ' The days of total reliance on tough decisions being left totally
to human judgement, integrity and respect are a thing of the past' (Keller, 2009). This decision has been one of great controversy as expected but it does make the decision making more fair as Fowler (2013) explains; 'Technology affects sport by addressing controversial or incorrect decisions made by match officials, improving the accuracy of decision making and reducing the number of controversial decisions'. A lot of people will still argue that it takes the originality and tradition away from the game and will even question what is the advantage of having a referee on the pitch. Some people are against increasing the amount of technology in football, Manchester United's ex manager Sir Alex Ferguson says; 'Technology will advance the game, I suppose, but you can't have too many things because then it takes a lot of power away from the referees at which case it becomes a bit of a shambles because the game is stop-start' (Sky Sports, 2015:1). Other advances within football include the balls used, football boot improvements and stadium changes.
With regards to the advance in performance analysis technology, there has been a lot since the 1900's when football became very popular. In this era there was pencil and paper or slate and chalk and that was it in which a manager or coach would make a tally. However there are still signs that this is used today and is a very influential part of coaching but getting statistics and being able to visually show a team or individual their performance has changed dramatically. 100 years on and we have countless software that can be used to analyse a team and data such as Dartfish, Longomatch, Game Breaker as well as simply just film and camera use.
Above is a snapshot of longomatch technology where you can use key performance indicators and mark each individual on performance.