A digital football revolution

The boys of SV Eidelstedt and SC Breitenburg give everything. Shortly before the end it is 1:1, the next goal would be at least a preliminary decision.

Then the striker of Eidelstedt gets the ball in a promising situation. A strong first contact, a turn, shot... Goal!

The roof of the Eidelstedt clubhouse lifts into the air, the players are in each other's arms and celebrate.

A few seconds later, the game is over, SVE is the overjoyed winner.

We turn off the Playstation.

Football on the Playstation: What sounds like Schalke 04's only realistic chance for the German championship was the second part of the first B42 Doubles Tournament.

The special thing about it is that the teams play against each other both on the pitch and on the Playstation. Sounds unorthodox at first, but it's our vision of how we can get young people more excited about football in the future and motivate them to train.

The idea?

The youngsters train with the B42-app and complete performance tests there. Those who are a little familiar with the B42-app know: the performance data is recorded in the B42 player card.

Then the actual tournament begins.

Here, the teams first meet on the court and then on the Playstation. The young people play their own team, consisting of the actual players who have been created in advance on the basis of their Playercard in the B42 app with the corresponding performance values in FIFA.

The young people thus not only act as soccer players, but also become their own e-sports characters.

The key to implementation here are the performance tests integrated in the B42-app and the individual Playercard of each app user formed from them.

So far, the player card reflects the four physical attributes of strength, mobility, endurance and speed.

These values are calculated from the actual training performance in our app and can be changed or further improved with ongoing training.

Of course, the performance profile of a football player cannot be reproduced with these purely physical attributes alone.

That's why we are currently integrating ball-specific training into our app. In the future, we will also be able to determine technical attributes.

The goal?

To be able to represent a player completely – i.e., taking into account all athletic, soccer, and tactical attributes - in our app.

The individual values of the players can be transferred to FIFA either congruently or analogously.

For example:

For example, from the speed value in our app we derive the FIFA values speed and attack.

Endurance, of course, remains endurance.

Strength values in the legs provide information about shooting power, strength values in the upper body about tackling power.

What the first tournaments showed us was extremely encouraging.

Although the transfer key is still incomplete and in the test phase, these events have shown us that we already fully meet the most important criterion:

The fun of the game and the associated readiness for "actual" training.

The games on the Playstation were at least as competitive for the B42 doubles as the real football matches on the pitch.

Of course, you can now critically – and quite rightly – question whether this is still real football, or what a console game has to do with it at all.

But from our point of view, it's the wrong question.

Football as a sport does not exist for its own sake.

If we exclude the economic factor of professional football, three decisive factors remain for mass sports in general and football in particular – especially among children and young people:

First, the fun of the game.

Second, learning social skills such as team spirit, fair play, but also assertiveness and self-discipline.

And thirdly, health, in the sense of regular sporting activity and exercise, through to the development of motoric skills.

For decades, our sports clubs have seen themselves as the focal point of society and the central support for these points. In recent years, however, we have observed an increasing decline in membership, which has been further exacerbated by the pandemic, and at the center of which are primarily children and young people.

The reasons for this are of course manifold, but one is obvious: the oversupply of (digital) alternatives to (common) employment.

And that's where we come in.

By combining training and gaming, we bring young people back onto the pitch.

To improve their scores on the Playstation, the players have to train in real life.

In the test runs, this worked much better than we had imagined.

"Why is he so much faster than me?"

"Why can he shoot so hard and I can't?"

While the youngsters had to be actively and repeatedly pushed by the coaches to work on their strength, mobility, endurance and speed with our app before the tournament, some couldn't wait to improve their scores as quickly as possible afterwards.

The competitive visualization of their own performance was an unprecedented stimulus for many.

And what is the result of motivated football players?

Fitter and healthier young people who can't imagine anything better than being able to stand on the pitch again in and with their club during training and games.

Football wins.

The clubs win.

The young people win.