AC Milan: The high-tech giants of European football

The sight of Concorde sitting unloved beside the runway at Heathrow serves as a poignant reminder that times change and we must move on. And so it is that I'm on my way to Milan to discover how the 'magic sponge' and 'get on with it attitude' of many a sports physio has been given the most comprehensive of high-tech makeovers.

Since July 2002, giants of European football AC Milan and Computer Associates have been developing a computer system which the club claims has helped reduce injury rates by 91 per cent. That system is now ready for a full deployment and CA claims a number of other clubs are already showing interest in a technology which looks set to shape the game in the 21st century.

The fact that the company's 'guinea pigs' are currently the European Cup holders can only help make the offering even more compelling. Furthermore AC Milan is so taken with the system that CA has signed an agreement stating it will not be able to offer the technology to other Italian sides.

Much of the investment in technologies such as this has been encouraged by the vast outlay clubs make when bringing players into the club.

Jean-Pierre Meersseman, medical director at AC Milan, said: "When you bring a player into the club who costs you millions of pounds and within two weeks he is injured, often for a long time, that is when you start thinking 'What can we do about it?'"

That is where CA came in, with a pitch based around the company's Cleverpath data analysis and business intelligence software which could reduce player 'downtime' within the AC Milan squad by predicting likelihood of injury.

For Meersseman, who has been with the club since injury cut short the career of Marco Van Basten, one of the all-time greats of the world game, the offer was certainly of great interest.

Injuries have always been an unfortunate part of the game but now the cost of losing a player is far greater than ever. With big name stars earning as much as £100,000 per week and transfer fees breaking the £40m barrier, the costs of 'downtime' are obvious, in terms of return on investment.

Laura Masi, marketing director at AC Milan, said: "AC Milan is not just a sports club, it is a business and the most important asset for our business is our players."

So using its Brightstor, CleverPath and eTrust software CA set about designing the project which analyses almost any conceivable piece of player data - from injury and recovery history, through diet, performance and even biochemical and skeletal statistics, such as weight distribution through the joints. Very little is left to chance, though Meersseman concedes "we still can't predict when a player is going to get hit in the head with a ball" - or even by another player for that matter.

The stats reveal a drop from 41 muscle injuries in the 2001/2002 season to just three last year. Of course that could be luck - but then the saying in football goes that 'you make your own luck in this game'.

If this all sounds a little mechanical then that's no coincidence. Players are regarded as part of the system, cogs in the machine, and in the same way architects need to know that no beam is bearing too much load and no support is under too much stress so the football club needs to know its players aren't going to break under pressure and undermine the effectiveness of the whole team.

The players also benefit from a systemic approach, according to Bruno Demichelis, AC Milan team psychologist.

"We are made up of systems, cardio-vascular systems, muscular systems, immune systems and neural, mental systems," he said.

"All systems are prone to damage and damage to any part of your system effects the whole machine. The little things can bring us to a huge and important result."

Last season data on more than 50 players was inputted into the system and the need to turn it around quickly is paramount. After all, there is little value in knowing that a player is likely to pick up an injury if he's already on the pitch and the match has started.

As such the AMD-powered, Unisys server array processing the data is turning it around in real time, as and when it is inputted, whether that's by a cook in the kitchen entering calorie intake into a PC, by a coach in the training centre inputting 50 metre split times via a PDA or by a statistician in the stands entering performance data during a game.

However, for all the complexity of the systems in place Demichelis insists "it wasn't difficult to set up MilanLab but it was difficult to change mentality". After all in a game where superstition and tradition still play major parts it isn't always easy to encourage the adoption of technology into age-old routines of team selection.

'New-fangled' methods don't always sit well with football managers and Demichelis says "convincing the players, managers, coaches and press" will be the biggest obstacle to further deployment of this system by CA.

The sell to AC Milan may have been made simpler by the fact that Daniele Tognaccini, the club's athletic coach, wrote his university thesis as long ago as 1989 on The use of computing in modern physical training programming.

In 1989 most English football managers would have struggled to even spell the word computer.

But Tognaccini insists the idea isn't to replace the human decision-making process with computers. This technology is complementary - enabling managers and coaches to make more informed decisions. And players and staff certainly appear to be embracing the technology.

"Like all things it took some time," said Tognaccini. "The football world is traditional and the players were very mistrustful at first. But when they realised [it was going to help them remain injury free] they accepted it."

However, Tognaccini conceded that, despite the apparent success of the system, it may not be to all tastes. "Some managers will only ever trust their instincts and gut feeling," he said.

It is clear that the importance Milan place on the system will bring it to the attention of other clubs. But also likely to be interested in the technology are going to be hackers - particularly those who follow rival clubs.

The temptation to launch a denial of service attack, or breach the system prior to a big game, may prove too tempting for Rome, Turin or rival Milan-based fans.

As such CA's eTrust security products have been deployed across the network to provide the levels of security you would expect to find guarding any multi-million euro business. And Fabrizio Titarelli, MilanLab project owner, is confident that the online security, like a good goalkeeper, will stand up to everything the opposition has to throw at it.

Offline the security is pretty tight as well. Armed guards patrol the perimeter fences and the nerve centre of the MilanLabs is protected by a series of biometric entry points. The inner sanctum, comprising sterile labs with monitors and servers, is like something out of a Bond film. The elite group of uniformed super-athletes exercising in a gym above our heads and the compound nature of the training complex further add to this image.

The set-up is certainly impressive and must come at a pretty price. However, the exact sums are a closely guarded secret and the value is tied up more in a contra agreement between the club and company than in the actual handing over of any money.

Demichelis insists it hasn't "cost us a dime". But that's a slight oversimplification of the deal.

Paul Wright, MD of sports advertising company Aura Sports and an expert on European football deals, said: "This is the type of deal a lot of clubs are striking, especially with technology partners."

The benefits are two-way. The club benefits from improved technology, at little or no real cost, while the partner benefits from a high-profile test-bed which may enable it to license products going forward.

There are also a number of other benefits from such a deal which will likely make it worth CA's while.

Wright said: "Associated sponsors of a large club such as AC Milan can expect to pay anywhere up to €1m per year. For that they would likely see a number of benefits such as corporate hospitality and pitchside advertising."

While that sum serves only as a guide, it is likely that some or all of that annual cost is paid in kind with the provisioning of technology and services.

Certainly CA's box of corporate seating right on the half way line in the San Siro stadium and the presence of CA hoardings around the pitch would suggest there is more than a little mutual back-scratching going on.

From the same stands as the CA box I witnessed AC Milan steamroller lowly Ancona in a 5-0 thrashing that saw the Rossoneri set out their intentions to reclaim the Scudetto. On this evidence it would certainly seem that everything is running smoothly - the perfect marriage of sporting excellence and technological advancement.

On the plane home I find myself next to Nancy Dell'Olio, glamorous tabloid favourite and partner of the England football manager Sven Goran Eriksson.

If I needed a further reminder that football has moved on, they don't come more striking than this.

In a time when there is an Italian-speaking Swede in the top job in English football it should perhaps come as no surprise that there are servers in the changing rooms, PDAs in the physio's kit bag and PCs in the kitchens at a major football club. And while it is perhaps unsurprising that this trend has begun in Milan, as many trends do, it is likely that technology will continue to play an increasingly important role in the development of sport worldwide.