We went behind the scenes at German Bundesliga club Hamburger SV to see how they leverage Hudl solutions to bring their player development to life.
Home, Impact, Future: HSV’s Three Pillars
Player development has long been a part of HSV’s DNA. The club has produced numerous talents, from legendary striker Uwe Seeler through to Jonathan Tah and Son Heung Min, while also providing an early platform for players like Vincent Kompany and Hakan Çalhanoğlu.
As such, it was important that nurturing talent was represented in the core tenets of their vision:
- Heimat: Meaning ‘Home’, this refers to continuing the club's history and creating a lifelong bond between player and HSV, whether they become professionals or not.
- Impact: The heart of the vision is developing intelligent, adaptable, confident players who can exhibit their outstanding traits on the pitch in an impactful way.
- Zukunft: Translates as ‘Future’ and relates to the clubs desire to be innovative and a pacesetter for both youth and coaching development.
These messages are reinforced all over the club’s stadium, training complex, and academy—via video clips of these pillars in action, artwork on the wall, and success stories. The buildings themselves are all within walking distance of one another, a physical representation of the pathways the club hopes to create for its players and staff.
Individual Player Development: How the Hudl Pro Suite Helps
A key aspect of bringing their vision to life is through individual player development plans (IDPs), which the club have implemented from academy to first team.
“Every player in our team – from U12s to the professionals – gets an individual plan with their strengths and also the fields that we want to improve,” says Favé. “And Hudl is a daily instrument for us in that.”
Leveraging Visual Learning
At the start of the season, coaches will sit down with each player to plan out their development goals for the campaign. This involves choosing an X-Factor, a special skill that differentiates them from their peers:
“The X-Factor is the starting point,” says Favé. “We use Hudl to do individual video analysis and always engage the players with positive scenes, so they consider ‘What are my best abilities? How do I bring them to the pitch? How can I use them better?’”
“We try to present things graphically via Hudl Studio, because I believe presentation is super important in the communication of these ideas. It's immediately possible for the players to understand what it's about.”
Video analysis doesn’t just focus internally, but looks further afield in order to aid player progression.
“We also constantly perform benchmark analyses within the campus using Wyscout to see how the best players in the world behave in their positions,” Favé continues. ”We take individual clips from this to provide the players with inspiration and to see what is currently happening at the top level.”
No Second Wasted
Players then have weekly analysis sessions with coaches throughout the season. Using training footage captured by Focus Flex portable cameras, coaches and analysts use Hudl Sportscode to tag and cut scenes and quickly send playlists to the Hudl platform for the players to review ahead of their sessions.
“We no longer have to export and import from the camera and we can upload from Sportscode to the Hudl library at the press of a button,” says Sören Meier, HSV’s Game Analyst. “For me, it's an extreme time saver and indispensable in working with players in video analysis.”
The hours saved by these integrated Hudl Pro Suite solutions allow coaches to spend more, better quality 1-on-1 time with the players on their development:
“I'm a very direct soccer coach; I want to go to the pitch, I want to do a meeting, I want to talk to the player,” says Lukas Anderer, HSV U21 Head Coach. “Previously I have worked in different setups, where cutting, tagging, exporting, sharing took a big part of my day. Now I don't have this issue anymore.”
“I have the software, the hardware, and I can focus on the topics with the players because everything around it works perfectly. So it saves me time, it's functional, and it's also easy. I know what the other side looks like and now I enjoy this side with Hudl.”
Encouraging Autonomy
Autonomous learning plays a fundamental role in Hamburger SV’s IDPs – so the ability to access their clips at any time, wherever they are, allows players to take greater ownership of their own development:
“The Hudl platform is very useful because they can use it on their mobile phone. They can use it at home, on the way to school or after school, on the bus to the training session, wherever they are, they can use it. It's very easy for them to be responsible for their own pathway,” explains Julia Brinkschröder, Head of Sports Strategy and Coach Development at HSV.
That responsibility extends to the quarterly development checks, with players taking an active role in selecting and discussing clips, and culminates with an end-of-year presentation, where they present their X-Factor progression in front of coaches, parents and friends.
“They are often very proud of presenting the X-Factor, for example. This is something they are very engaged in.”
Ultimately, the goal of the IDPs is to progress talented youngsters up the age groups and, in an ideal world, into the first team. To ease this transition, Hudl’s connected solutions allow every coach throughout the club to see the same player journey, speak the same language, and work towards the same goals:
“I think the special thing is that everyone has access to everything,” says Julia. “We all have a vision of what the players did in the past, what we want to develop next, and we can share their development plans and clips. It's clear from the U12s to the pros.”
Making up for Lost Time
Promotion back to the Bundesliga points to immediate success of this new-look HSV, but their longer-term project of youth development will inevitably require longer to bear fruit. Nevertheless, there are green shoots emerging already.
The club reached the knockout stages of the U17 and U19 German Championships, have received an increase in international call ups, and have seen more players making the step up to train with the first team.
The prime example is twenty-year-old academy graduate Fabio Baldé, who is now a regular and an emblem of this successful pathway.
“We are convinced that the players who are now at the younger age groups, 12 to 13, when they get to the more professional age groups they will be far ahead of their peers,” concludes Julia. “Because they learned from a young age to reflect on their performances, to know what their strengths were, to know how to use this technology.”
The clock, no longer a symbol of pride but a harsh reminder of what was lost, may be gone now. But as time ticks on, the future of Hamburger SV looks like it's in good hands.
Could your club benefit from HSV's approach to connected player development? The Hudl Pro Suite combines capture, analysis and review in a single workflow.
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