The billion-dollar partnership between STATSports Group and the U.S. Soccer Federation, which the parties announced earlier this year, will encourage all members — whether part of the national teams or youth academies — to wear tracking devices but will not collect player-specific data from academy players.
U.S. Soccer is only collecting player-specific data from its national teams, according to director of communications, Neil Buethe. And while the partnership does not require all U.S. Soccer members, whether elite or otherwise, to wear STATSports devices, the goal is “to give every member the opportunity to have their data compared and assessed against the top academies who are using our APEX Team Series,” said STATSports CIO Paul McKernan.