Professional football in VR: a first!
This isn't the first time a football club has used augmented reality for player training. But it is the first time such equipment has been used within a professional football team.
This is a new milestone that Stoke City has just taken, and one that should undoubtedly inspire other clubs. Especially since the combination of sport and virtual reality offers many advantages over traditional training.
Less expensive, faster, and less demanding soccer training!
It's a fact: training a team of professional players comes at a cost. It's an investment in terms of cost, time, and resources, to which virtual reality now offers an obvious alternative. This technology allows you to work on a specific action on a particular player without having to mobilize the rest of the team. This is also why the goalkeeper position is a priority. Armed with a VR headset, a goalkeeper will be able to work and rework the essential automatisms again and again.
Stoke City has the choice of creating all sorts of tailor-made scenarios or using pre-recorded scenarios. Corners, free kicks, and other phases of play can be reproduced with a high degree of realism in order to visualize teammates and opponents alike. The ultimate goal of this 2.0 training is, of course, to improve decision-making and reflexes.
While virtual reality will never replace the physical dimension, it has the immense advantage of reducing contact during training to better preserve the integrity of athletes. VR could even be extended to other sports such as rugby. And why not table football? Can a player record and reproduce the play of a great foosball champion for player training?
