sabakathawala / socceredu

SoccerEdu

Inspiration

325.7 million is the population of the United States of America (USA) 0.28 million is the average number of USA viewers per Major League Soccer (MLS) game last year. That is a conversion of a mere 0.00085%! Some folks rather watch the European leagues, some just do not have the time to follow it week-in-week-out, lack of matches broadcasted on the network etc. But a _ LARGE _ population loose interest because they do not entirely understand the game rules, jargons and tactics. Not that they do not want to learn, but they rather just give up rather than struggle finding the (dearth of) right resources. How do you solve this gap? Do not worry! The SoccerEdu app is here to help people learn about soccer.

What it does

SoccerEdu is an app with a mission to help educate people about soccer. Users will learn everything about soccer from basic (standard formation) to intermediate (through ball) to advance (offside trap strategy) terminologies. There is something to learn for everyone and provides a seamless user-friendly experience. Besides depicting visualizations, data dictionary, statistics, SoccerEdu features unique explanations using top-down 2D video of soccer highlights. By showing a split view of the real highlight along with the explanation in the top-down 2D video.

How we built it

We are building UI oriented android app. Our app consists of a number of connected activities that can be navigated thereby creating a seamless experience. It consists of the following major features:

1. Users have the option to select their current level of soccer knowledge: basic, intermediate, advance. Basic: Rules, 4-4-2 formation, pass, lob, tackle etc. Intermediate: 3-5-2 formation, dribble, through ball, sliding tackle etc. Advanced: False 9 formation, Cryuff-turn, tiki-taka, shield, contain etc.
2. 2-D Video explanation of action item along with the real video (please see the Video Demo).
3. Quiz section to gamify the application. User must pass the quiz in order to proceed to the higher level.

Challenges we ran into

Firstly, 2/3 of us have limited knowledge of soccer which created a challenge to understand the data and brainstorm about our idea. Secondly, the Opta data provided has the X,Y coordinates of only the two players involved in the ball action at a given time. We expect it should be easy to get all the players at a particular instant.

Accomplishments that we are proud of

Being passionate about soccer, we had several bright technical ideas (build a player Elo rating system based on 1-vs-1 duel position etc). But we are immensely proud to instead take a novel approach to build SoccerEdu, an app that helps and guides people to learn and further the sport.

What we learned

How a team of 3 members having diverse ideas and skillset worked together to build a fully functional front-end app in 24 hours.

What's next for Soccer.edu

1. Scale SoccerEdu to provide a real-time explanation of game events
2. Monetize the platform by offering premium services and advertisements.
3. Build a community platform to connect fans with teams and engage with each other.