Chapter 836 Is this still underestimated?

"Welcome to Staplewood, guests from afar!"

When several Southampton reception vehicles, carrying Klaus Michael Kuhn and others, drove south from London's Wembley Stadium to Southampton's Staplewood training base, Les Reid greeted them outside the training building.

This British youth training expert, who had just been promoted to technical director of Southampton, wore a clean white shirt and a scarlet tie, which looked somewhat dazzling. He wore a pair of glasses on his slightly bald round head, which made him look very friendly.

This kind of affinity can be seen in almost everyone who works in youth training.

"Hello, Mr. Reed, thank you very much for your reception!"

Kuhn and others got out of the car one by one and walked up to shake hands with Les Reed.

"This is what we should do, Mr. Kuhn!" Les Reed seemed very polite.

These were guests personally sent by Young Master Huan, so he naturally had to receive them warmly. Moreover, Young Master Huan would come back in the evening to treat them to dinner.

"Let me introduce you to Andris Jonker, our head of youth training."

The tall, blond middle-aged man next to him immediately stepped forward and politely shook hands with Kuhn and the others.

"Junker?" Kuhn frowned slightly. "If I remember correctly, you were Van Gaal's assistant coach?"

"Yes, I was the chief assistant coach when Luis was at Barcelona and Bayern Munich," Juncker said with a smile.

Kuhn nodded. "It's nice to meet you, Andris. I've heard Ricardo mention you many times."

"Ricardo?" Junker was a little surprised. Who is it?

"Ricardo Moniz!"

"Oh, it's him!" Junker suddenly realized.

Now it fits.

Ricardo Moniz once served as an assistant coach at Hamburg and later became the team's head coach.

"At that time, we were planning to renovate Hamburg's youth training camp. I asked Ricardo for his opinion. He recommended you to us and believed that Barcelona's youth training camp had achieved its current success thanks to your transformation. Later, when you followed Van Gaal into Bayern Munich, you also started to transform Bayern Munich's youth training camp."

At this point, Kuhn laughed and said, "He told me that if you ask anyone who is familiar with European youth training, Andris Jonker will definitely be among the top three most famous youth training experts in Europe."

"Thank you!" Junker said with a modest smile.

Alexander Otto and others were also a little shocked. They didn't expect that anyone from Staplewood would be so awesome!

As early as in the car just now, they had already learned that Les Reid of Southampton was a well-known youth training expert in the UK and even in Europe, but they did not expect that there was a youth training powerhouse like Andris Jonker hidden in Staplewood.

Oh, I heard that he is the team’s youth training director, and he should have taken office in the past year.

There have been media reports that Southampton is undergoing management reforms.

There are reports that Peter Kenyon may leave the team, Ron Gourlay will move from chief operating officer to chief executive officer, while Nicola Cortes will remain as executive chairman and Les Reid will serve as the team's technical director.

So, Andris Juncker should have come at that time.

"Everyone, please come in!" Les Reed smiled and invited everyone into the training building.

The Staplewood Training Base is divided into two major training areas, one for the first team and the other for the youth team. Both are equipped with advanced hardware facilities such as training buildings and indoor training grounds.

Among them, the youth team's training area has two more professional football fields, which are the football fields used by the Southampton youth team. One of them is also equipped with a live broadcast and multimedia system, which is specially provided for the youth team to participate in the European Youth Champions League and other venues with live broadcast matches.

The two training areas are separated after entering the gate. You can only walk in between and vehicles cannot pass through.

In the middle of the two areas, there are some shared facilities and venues, such as the data analysis and research center, the medical and rehabilitation center, and the indoor football stadium that is popular among the players.

The first place Kuhn and others visited was the Saints' first-team training building.

Kuhn and others visited this training building, which is well-known in European football, with a pilgrimage mentality of learning, but because the first team went to London to participate in the Community Shield, the training building was empty and there were almost no people.

But Kuhn and others were surprised by the hardware facilities of the training building.

Let’s not talk about anything else, just the simplest room for players to rest is completed completely according to the standards of a five-star hotel.

"Our players' rooms have just completed a new round of renovations, which were completed in full accordance with the requirements of sleep expert Nick Littlehalles. Although a considerable amount of money has been invested, the players' responses have been very good. Therefore, in the next year, we will continue to renovate the rooms in the youth team's training building."

Kuhn, Otto and others were all surprised.

This incident has been reported by the media before, and it is said that the renovation cost more than seven figures.

But Southampton has such courage!

After visiting the players' rooms, they came to a big door.

The gate is very ordinary, but what makes it different is the sign erected at the gate, which reads, "Non-players, no entry!"

"This is the exclusive area for players that many media reporters report on!"

Alexander Otto immediately became interested and wanted to push the door open to take a look inside, but he couldn't push it open no matter what.

"Hey, why is it locked?"

Les Reid smiled and nodded: "Yes, the player-only area was proposed by Master Huan, and it is very popular among the players. Except for the first-team players, no one has the key, and no one is allowed to enter."

"What's in there?" Kuhn asked with great interest.

Not only him, but everyone around him showed curious looks.

But Les Reed shook his head helplessly and said, "To be honest, I don't know either!"

Everyone suddenly broke into a sweat.

Even the technical director doesn’t know what’s inside. It’s so mysterious!

"I'm very confused, Mr. Reed!" Kuhn asked curiously, "What if the players discuss something that is detrimental to the team? Will the club not care?"

Les Reid nodded. "Yes, we won't care."

"Why?"

"This is a minimum trust. The players believe in us, so they join Southampton and entrust their precious careers to us, so we also fully believe in the players."

Les Reid said this and then changed the subject. "Of course, even if there are players who really want to harm the team, there are 20 or 30 players there. Will they all join in? If so, then I believe that there must be something wrong with the club!"

When everyone heard this, they couldn't help but nod their heads.

That's indeed the truth, isn't it?

For Southampton, a player's career is the most valuable.

"Is this Master Huan's idea?" Kuhn asked again.

"Well, yes!" Les Reed nodded.

Kuhn didn't say anything more. He just took a deep look at the gate and turned away with Les Reed.

Walking around the first-team training building, they were all shocked by Southampton's investment in training facilities.

They had only seen some reports in the media and heard some things before, but only when they saw it with their own eyes did they realize that Southampton was so advanced and had such forward-thinking ideas.

But when they left the first-team training building and walked into the data analysis and research center, they were even more surprised.

Unlike the empty training building, the offices of the Data Analysis and Research Center were brightly lit, and everyone was working intensively. And the two people in the lead were Marcus du Satoy and Howard Hamilton who had been reported in the newspapers, right?

These are two of Southampton’s data analysts!

"I'm sorry, everyone. They are busy preparing the data analysis results of the game that just ended. When the team returns to Southampton, Bielsa will hold an analysis discussion meeting and it will be used at that time, so we can't go in to visit."

Kuhn and others also understood this.

But I was very surprised in my heart. I didn't expect that Southampton would analyze the pros and cons just after the game ended.

This is really efficient.

"Although we can't get in, Hamburg has contacted us before and is interested in introducing our data analysis system. So, I can reveal here that many rumors in the media are inaccurate."

"Inaccurate?" Kuhn looked at Les Reed in surprise.

"Mr. Reed, what you mean is..."

Les Reed smiled confidently and calmly, "What I mean is that they underestimated our system."

"What?" Kuhn and the others were all shocked.

This system has been praised by the media as miraculous, how can it be underestimated?

"In the past four years, our database has accumulated data on European players. We have also preliminarily completed the collection of data on players from other continents, such as Asia and South America. I can say that any player you can name can be found here."

At this point, Les Reed smiled and said, "We may even be able to know and understand their players better than their coaches."

Kuhn, Otto and others looked at each other in shock. How could this be possible?

Les Reed had received a call from Yang Huan before and knew that Young Master Huan's intention was to intimidate this group of fan representatives.

So, he didn't say anything polite. After saying "wait a moment", he nodded to Andreas Juncker behind him. The latter immediately knocked on the door and walked into the office. Not long after, he turned around and came out with a document in his hand.

Les Reid took the file and looked at it. "This is Fabregas's statistics from the Community Shield match just now. You can take a look at it."

Kuhn and others quickly took it and opened it. They were shocked by the first page.

In the past, the player-related data they saw in the media and newspapers, or even in the hands of club staff, were at most the player's running distance, number of passes, success rate, interceptions, steals, threatening passes, etc.

If there is a little more, it would be to equip it with passing route maps and running heat maps.

But all of this pales in comparison to the data analysis of Southampton in front of us.

"Thanks to the improvement in broadcasting standards in recent years, especially ultra-high-definition broadcasting, we can get more game data. Generally speaking, the data we get from broadcasters in each game is often ten times or even dozens of times what fans see, because we need everything captured by every camera in 90 minutes."

It has to be said that Kuhn and others were really shocked.

Because they simply cannot imagine how much work this would take.

Isn’t this too scary?

Looking at the world of football, oh no, in the world of sports, who can compare with this data analysis ability?