Nowadays the coach needs to be prepared to justify themselves for the team’s results. More than his perception wether the result is fair or not, the presentation of data is one of the best argument. Assuming that the team that wins is the deserving one, because they scored more goals than the opposing team, we might think that the presentation of data would not help to justify a possible injustice in the final or critical outcome of the exhibition. In this case, the facts would not justify the result because it is factual by the number of goals of each team, however provides some support for the coach to justify the work that has been developed over the weeks. That is, show that the daily training process is not wrong just because the result was not what we wanted or the display was not convincing in the eyes of some.

So we will present two different situations where Videobserver (VO) has proved to be an excellent tool to help us argue/defend our work and the evolution of the team. Based on data collected and provided by the team report generated with VO, in each game several statistics are presented, however in this case we will present only the number of dangerous shots, which illustrates the number of goal opportunities each team has created.

1st situation: our team won the game with a goal near the end of the match and at the end there is some criticism about the team’s performance

Data Collected with VO:

2ª Situation: our team lost and start to be criticized for the work that has been done by the technical team, that is, the whole process that has been developed week after week.

Data collected with VO:

In both situations, if the coach feels that the criticism is wrong (either by the exhibition or by the work of the technical staff) and feels the need to defend his team, the use of statistical data as an argument can be a good way of defending the work that has been developed or the exhibition. Here enter the data that the VO presents to us. As I said, the dangerous shots provide us with a sense of the goal opportunities created by the team and in both situations the team created several chances of goal and in greater number than the opponent. Then it is up to the coach to know how to use these numbers in their favor.

In summary, these numbers can be used as arguments to defend the team from criticism, however, in our opinion, these figures can not be used to say that a result was unfair. As we have already said, the result lives on goals and those who score the most deserve to win. However, it is important to have the notion that the numbers help to present facts that can help us to argue and defend the way we play, our team and our daily work in training – even more in youth soccer, as is the case.