This continues a new category of posts: Guest columns where friends and
readers share how technology is reshaping their hobby – fishing, basket weaving,
rugby – whatever.
This time it is good friend and client, Christian Schuh (at the newly privatized Siemens Enterprise Communications Group) about his weekend passion – coaching and refereeing weekend soccer.
“They say we are born with footballs in our cribs in Germany. No, not what we in the US, my adopted country, call football. Real football – soccer. I love the sport, live for the periodic World and European Cups and Olympics – and try to get to as many of those tournaments as I can. But who can wait every few years?
I get a steady diet of my sport via my son and the next generation of soccer players. Just about every other weekend I am with them at a league match or tournament somewhere in the country.
Soccer itself prides itself at sheer ability and has been shy unlike American football to bring too much technology into the sport.
But as IT manager I am glad much of the soccer worlds tournament and league administration has become automated. Pre-tournament activities such as team registrations, publishing of tournament rules, team hotel info, etc all are routinely found on the web. Then the acceptance into a tournament comes vie email or SMS to a cell-phone. No paper or phone calls.
During a tournament, team managers and coaches must remain connected, since all data like scores, standings, who moves on to the quarter- or semifinals is posted on websites that keep getting more and more elaborate. And unlike the on-premise software I deal with in my day job, I like the fact that all the soccer stuff is SaaS.
Services like GotSoccer.com and Soccer In College permit teams to maintain rosters, and individual players can maintain detailed bio-graphical info online, which these tournaments then use to attract college coaches to attend tournaments. Bit of an eHarmony to match coaches and players.
Yes, my weekend passion takes a lot of time and effort, but as payback, it is
great to see my son, Patrick,
18 (in the picture) being recruited by a number of colleges for their soccer
programs.
I also have a feeling that Patrick and his contemporaries will allow more technology to enter the sport. After all, they all play FIFA 09, where they can make up their own teams, trade and manage players (they know all of them from watching countless international matches on satellite channels that broadcast the worlds game 24x7), play in any big league of the world... they even bring the games to the hotels, hook them to the TVs in rooms and play in between games at tournaments.
So long as they don’t yell Hut Hut at every snap, I mean pass, or start having TV-timeouts every couple of minutes, I am ok with the encroaching technology :)”
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