Technical analysis helping to set benchmarks in women's football
Friday, May 23, 2025
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The likes of Anna Signeul and Olivier Doglia provide their insight on the developing innovations in women's football.
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"Now we have immediate videos, analysis, breakdowns, trends. It's fantastic and that's because of the advanced technology that UEFA uses today. I think that this is the key for the development of the game."
Those were the words of Anna Signeul, one of the most experienced Technical Observers in UEFA's performance analysis unit, which supports the growth of women's football by providing tactical reviews, performance insights and technical reports across competitions such as the UEFA Women's Champions League, Women's Nations League, youth tournaments and the Women's EURO.
Identifying new trends
"It's really important", as UEFA's head of technical education and development Olivier Doglia says in the introduction to the first of the two videos embedded in this article above, "that, together with the Technical Observers, we spot and identify new trends and present the findings to member associations and clubs to strengthen youth development."
UEFA's production of technical reports on women's competitions dates back a couple of decades and, along with the women's game in general, has accelerated in recent years, incorporating detailed visual input from the technical analysis unit and reaching a wider audience via coverage on the UEFA website.
The result is a wealth of material which is cascaded from elite to grassroots levels via coach education courses and conferences or projects such as UEFA Share events, the Coach Development Programme for Women, the Coach Mentor Programme or coaching seminars right across Europe, all of which interlock with key concepts in the 'Unstoppable' document – UEFA's six-year strategy for the continuing development of women's football.
Benefits to national associations and coaches
While the first video outlines the creative processes that underpin UEFA's tactical analysis of individual and team performances on a typical matchnight in club and national team competitions, the second evaluates the impact on a national association – such as the FAW in Wales where, as chief football officer David Adams says, UEFA reports and data "help a lot because we've only a small workforce at the association. We repurpose it into our own material, which helps us to keep building in a new and innovative way".
2024/25 tactical analysis
UEFA's Technical Observer Group features elite coaches and former players whose reflections, backed by detailed data, not only provide a basis for detecting tactical trends but also highlight the benchmarks being set at the top end of the game.
"UEFA's tools are a game-changer for coaches," comments Jayne Ludlow – one of the members of the team. "Having access to these and different opinions of other coaches or knowledgeable people with experience are fabulous from a coach development perspective."
"For me as a coach," Signeul adds, "it's always been the most important thing to understand what high performance is" – a viewpoint endorsed during the second video by the FAW's head of performance analysis and football insights, Esther Wills.
"The data that we've had from UEFA recently has been really helpful," she says. "It has been a big help for us from a benchmarking perspective, giving us little tactical solutions for problems. It's a great resource, a great library of work that you can access and bring into your own environment."
Deeper insights key
In his role as the FAW’s Chief Football Officer, David Adams works with the head coaches of the men's and women's national teams with a view to making sure the teams are, as he puts it, "set up for success" and establishing "how we set out and play from a tactical perspective". At the FAW's annual coaches' conference, he adds, "we'll use a lot of the UEFA reports, a lot of the data, a lot of the insights".
Norway national team head coach Gemma Grainger, also part of the Technical Observer Group, sums up the value of UEFA's match analysis programme. "As a coach, you're always wanting to make sure that you're ahead of the game tactically and stay up to date on trends and data. It's forward thinking in terms of content. It's really useful and it helps to support the development of coaches and teams."
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