Between dream and data: Jogo provides insight into the development of football players

Developing a sports tech platform, walking into Ajax and casually claiming that you know more technically about your football-playing son than they do about Hakim Ziyech. That’s how David Dwinger approached it with his app Jogo. It helped that his thirteen-year-old son plays at Ajax. ‘Ajax wasn’t immediately convinced, but the questions they asked strengthened my belief that I was on the right track,’ says the football dad.

Dwinger, who himself has a technical background at companies such as RBS, ABN Amro, and Schiphol, devised a system in which data from football players is recorded with the help of artificial intelligence and machine learning. A whole range of different data points are collected that provide a good picture of how a player is developing. Testing is done on five pillars: mental, physical, cognitive, technical, and tactical. ‘A coach might watch a video—if he even watches it at all—and what he sees is subjective. Our goal is precisely to collect as much objective data as possible.’ In this way, not only can players be compared with each other, but a player’s development can also be accurately measured. 

This measurement takes place in three ways. Using their phone, the player films themselves while performing certain exercises. The artificial intelligence in the Jogo app analyzes these images and converts them into data. In addition, the player can answer all kinds of questions, which also provide insights into their cognitive skills. ‘We have also developed an in-house sensor that goes into the football boot and can measure even more data, such as distance covered, ball contact, speed, and the player’s two-footedness,’ Dwinger explains. The sensor also feeds this data back to the app. 

The fact that Jogo is also gaining international recognition is proven by the collaborations that have started with top clubs such as Manchester City, Benfica, and Valencia. In addition, there are many other clubs making use of the technology. ‘That Manchester City believes in data science was recently demonstrated by Kevin De Bruyne. He negotiated a contract worth 100 million euros for the next four years based on his own data, which of course fits our story perfectly.’ And that was even without the detailed data capabilities that Jogo offers. 

Jogo also offers unprecedented opportunities for football scouts, as they can easily pick talent from a database. Dwinger: ‘A scout will say that he can see for himself whether someone can play football. But what we show is how that player will play next year or in five years.’ To reach talented amateurs as well, Dwinger is launching Jogo for countries, making the technology available to anyone with a dream. From this, national teams will eventually be formed. This project will start in the Netherlands, Spain, Brazil, and England.

There is no shortage of investors: the first 100,000 euros came from real estate entrepreneur Alain Rosenbaum, whom he knows from the football field. In the meantime, a total of 1.8 million euros has been raised from angel investors in four rounds. And in two years, the staff has grown to about forty people, and football clubs are lining up for an appointment.

Mathijs Hofmijster, movement scientist at VU Amsterdam: ‘An interesting product that has the potential to contribute to the effective identification of talent. The amount of objective data benefits a reliable prediction. That reliability is important: in complex sports like football, predictions about talent are also complicated, according to the scientific literature.’