Jim White: Of course, it’s well known. We covered the story this week where the top European leagues and the global players union, fipro, filed a legal complaint with the European Commission Against FIFA, claiming the world governing body has shown quotes an abuse of dominance. This all gets down to many elite level players saying something’s got to change. We’re playing too many games, and it could lead to us taking action of our own. This was Manchester City’s Rotary. Yeah,

Rodrigo Hernández Cascant: I think we’re close to that. I mean, because it’s easy to understand. I mean, if we’re asking something anything, I think it’s something general. I think you ask any player, he will say the same. It’s not like the opinion of Rodri or whatever, no. So I think it’s a general opinion of the players, and if it keeps this way, it will be a moment that we have no other option, I really think. But let’s see. I don’t know, I don’t know what’s going to happen, but it’s something that worry us, because we are the guys that suffer. So yeah, so it

Jim White: worries him. What is the top level players? And they might do something about it, and that’s something about it might end up being strike action, we shall see. But does the the data and science back up the player welfare debate? I’m delighted to say, the chief executive and founder of Kitman labs, Stephen Smith joins us live in studio. Stephen, good morning.

Stephen Smith: Good morning. Thank you.

Jim White: Great having you on board, because this is very topical, Stephen, is it not? Now, tell me about Kitman labs and what, what kind of data you’ve been researching and what you’ve come up with?

Stephen Smith: Yeah, we’ve been collecting a huge amount of data about everything that the athletes do, whether it’s what they’re doing in training, what they’re doing in games, medical information, the types of injuries that are occurring. And I think what we’ve seen over the last number of years is that there’s been an explosion in the amount of congested fixtures, so the number of fixtures that have three or less days between them, and we’re seeing that there’s a direct correlation between this fixture congestion and the number of injuries that are occurring, right? So

Jim White: I’ll put it to you straight. Is there any clear evidence to suggest more games put players at higher risk of injury?

Stephen Smith: I think there’s clear evidence that the number of congested games, it has a direct relationship with the number of injuries at one time. Yeah, it’s when they all happen together. And I think what we’re seeing is, over the last three seasons, we’ve seen an increase in the number of congestion chains that have more than 5678, games in a row, with less than three days between them, and that has a relationship with injuries. However, we have seen clubs that have been able to avoid that, and top tier clubs that have been able to avoid that, and they’ve been breaking the chains by like, introducing different aspects of rotation. So I think there’s learnings that can be made from this.

Jim White: I mean, you’ve called on all the governing bodies and stakeholders to take an evidence led approach before making huge statements around player welfare. In other words, listen to what you’re coming up with.

Stephen Smith: Well, what I’m saying is that it’s a it’s an impossible conversation right now, because they can’t walk into a boardroom and have a discussion between all the stakeholders and say, This is the number of games. That’s too many. And the reason they can’t do that is there’s an absence of information. They have one piece of information, which is the games. They don’t have the medical information, on mass across all the teams, they don’t have the training information on mass, therefore they can’t answer the question properly.

Jim White: It’s intriguing, isn’t it, Simon, so here we have Stephen with his Kitman labs, who produced all this data. But I think what we’re seeing, are we not Stephen, is there is no clear evidence to suggest jet that more games adds up to a player indulging or putting himself at risk.

Stephen Smith: Well, I think every time they play, right, that’s That’s an increase in risk, right? There’s a risk taken out of your field. So the more often you do that, the more risk there is. But I think what we need to see is we need to see all of the stakeholders come together and to decide that we need to collect this information so we do have the evidence, so we can say, this is how much you can play. This is how many, this is how many practice minutes you can get. This is a number of game minutes you can get in certain periods of time. We’ve seen this work in other industries. This is not the first time, you know, we’ve seen it happen in truck drivers. And that may seem like a really random like, you know, example, but we saw this in the late 90s, when there was a huge increase in number of like collisions that were happening in truck drivers, they started to introduce tachographs into the vehicles. And then they understood when drivers were driving over a certain amount of minutes in a day and a certain amount of minutes over the over a number of days, that there was an increase in accidents happening.

Jim White: That’s a great comparison, isn’t it? So they worked out for the truck drivers. Why? Why can’t they work it out for the football Yeah, no, I can this football behind the curve in this would you say?

Stephen Smith: I wouldn’t say it’s behind the curve. I just think they need to come together. Everybody’s looking after their own fiefdom. And I think what needs to happen is that all of these government governing bodies and stakeholders need to come together and say, it’s all of our interests for this to work. It’s all of our interest to have the best players on the field all the time. It’s in everybody’s interest to have more games. However, there’s a balance to be struck.

Jim White: Steve’s made a great point, and that’s exactly the point that Bobby Barnes, your mate, ex fief Pro X PFA was saying the other day, it’s only sense to get round the table and talk about it.

Simon Jordan: If you’re coming from a position of finding solutions, then of course, it makes sense to have dialog. If you’re coming from the position of telling some people what you don’t want to do, that’s not a constructive conversation. That’s simply walking into a room to tell someone what you don’t want to do. Now I would have felt that it’s pretty obvious if you keep on putting players into a situation where they’re playing highly competitive games every three days or ultimately, the data tells you that there’s going to be more likely injuries, whatever the however they manifest themselves. I think you have to think you have to exclude collision instances from those sort of equations, because they’re going to happen at any moment. But other other injuries, whether it’s soft muscle or whether it’s other issues around the body, then I think it’s pretty much common sense to suggest, the more you put someone in the way of a regular stress load, the more likely you are to have injuries. I don’t think that’s particularly revolutionary. It’s about how you use that information to be able to say, right? The maximum players play play. I mean, we got this ridiculous analysis that players are gonna play 75 games. That’s if you win every single tournament that you play and play every single international game. And you take the extreme as the measurement, the average football in this country, certainly in the Premier League, probably plays about 40 odd games. And I think anyone can suggest that gives you a situation where you’re overworked, right? It’s about, then, what do you do? Yeah? Do you manage for the extreme, or do you manage for that’s like the tyranny of the minority rather than the tyranny of the majority? So the minority gets to deploy the standards over the industry, because they’re the stars. Yeah? You listen to Rodri saying, for example, Rodri that I think every other footballer don’t talk bloody stupid. It’s only you know you’re not gonna talk to talk to a Southampton player and say to a Southampton player that’s probably going to play 38 games this season, apparently, in a few Cup games, he’s overworked.

Jim White: So you get that, Stephen, don’t you absolutely. And Simon makes a great point. There are those who will play non stop virtually, because their calendar demands it, because they’re the elite. There are others who are quite happy with their lot. Did Kitman labs come up with at that end, the top end, the Rodri end, what’s acceptable and what isn’t, and

Stephen Smith: Well, again, we need the data across, like, a large enough swath of clubs. What we can show from the clubs that we’re working with, and we’re gathering this level of like, intimate information about what they’re doing in training and games, is that absolutely, there is a relationship between fixture congestion and injury rate, but also we can clearly state that there’s a way to solve it, and I think the leagues and governing bodies have to mandate approaches across teams to collect that information in training, in games and medical information together to be able to answer this through intelligence. And that’s our message.

Jim White: You want to determine why they’re not doing that already. Here’s Stephen and Kitman labs, who can sit down with any top club, any top organization, football associated, and say, we’ll work it out for you, and then we’ll present you with this. It’s up to you to deliberate over it, as in how you like but piggy to what we’re saying here.

Simon Jordan: Well, I again, I don’t mean to be disrespectful to Stephen, but I think this is pretty fundamental. I think the most rudimentary effects are pretty self evident. If you play people in games repeatedly over a period of time, every three days, it’s likely you’re going to get injuries from players where the very nature of the construct of the human anatomy, it’s bleeding obvious. It’s about then, what do clubs do? Because they are entered into tournaments, they don’t have control over the fixture list. They don’t have control over when they play. Yeah. So they can do very little with this information besides use it for the common sense objective that it should be deployed in, which is rotation. It’s rotation. That’s rotate players.

Stephen Smith: We’re also seeing younger players that are picking up more injuries today than they would have five six seasons ago, and that tells us something about the change in exposure from playing at Academy level or youth level and then coming into first team football, and how intense the Premier League is today. So we’re even we’re even seeing changes there. And I think the reason why they haven’t done the reason why governing bodies haven’t done this is that it’s hard you kept like walking into a boardroom and telling an owner you have to collect this information in this way through this system, and provide this back to us so that we can ask these questions. They’re involving themselves in the club’s business, and that hasn’t been done before. It’s been an area where they’ve said the performance information, the data you’re collecting, that’s your business as a club owner, and as like as that prior, you’re right. So now they have to step in and say, we’re going to do this. Yeah, but we’ve seen it done really successfully in other sports leagues like the NFL have been doing this for years, and they’ve been doing it successfully, and they’ve been leveraging the insights to change the rules of their game, to change the regulations around what players are doing, and they’ve been reducing injury rates through things like that. So like we again, we can follow the example of what other leagues, other other governing bodies have been doing, and we can improve this.

Jim White: But this scenario that we’re in, yeah, have you made an approach to FIFA to say you need us? You need the information we collate. Yeah.

Stephen Smith: I mean, we’ve, we’ve talked to people at FIFA before, but, I mean, it’s a, it’s a 10 headed monster, right? How do you get, how do you get to the right people there to be able to make that happen? And, you know, they’re focused on lots of different things, but, you know, maybe, maybe they’re listening to this, yeah, maybe

Jim White: They’re listening to it, but I presume they probably are, but their focus, that’s a great point you made. Their focus is on The Club World Cup and the money that it makes for the top end owners like this fella, absolutely, who want the money for their clubs.

Simon Jordan: But then they have them, but then they have people like Venga, who sit on top of it, who is their global head of football. That is a campaigner and an advocate. First of all, he was the innovator that people alight upon in terms of the change of culture that he brought to English for Yeah, yeah. So venga has that steeped in his mindset, yeah. So he’s the person that would be looking at, but he’s the person who’s advocating for two World Cups every four years. He’s the person that’s advocating for the FIFA World Cup championship. I think data is good. It depends upon I mean data, for data’s sake, is one thing, and you can manipulate data to make it give you the outcomes that it wants, and put it through a subset of interrogation and give you the outcomes. But I would suggest that it’s pretty, pretty, pretty common sense to suggest that if you put a bunch of games into play, and you analyze games where people are playing six games over over a 21 day period, or 18 day period, and then analyze that against four games over an 18 day period, you’re going to see more injuries coming out of the absolutely the 18 day period with six games, yeah. And then what you do with that information is, then, how do I overlay that in my consideration for the commercial reality of playing in the Premier League, playing in the FA Cup, playing in the League Cup, the clubs will have this data. They’ll have it. You know, even back in my time, 10 years ago, they’re not sharing it. Well, that’s one thing. But to use the intelligence, the responsibility for the athletes, to some extent, is with themselves and with their employers. So the employers want to use loans. So as an owner, I’m sat in sat there the NFL is a useful analysis, because the way that the nfo is structured is that the league, in of itself, is very different than the Premier League, because it’s not consisting with warring owners that are not business partners. They’re consisting of a different mindset, yes, but we used to sit there with data, and I would know the data, and I would know what the player’s medical records were and why they were doing this, and why, which particular injury was, you know, related to one particular player, and why was this happening in that particular instance? Now sharing that information, but also being responsible for managing it and deploying an outcome with the players? Because I don’t think you’re arguing for the argument that the players are making, which is the amount of games. It’s the distribution of the games that you’re arguing for. You’re not saying there’s, I mean, there is an option. At some point they cross over. There crossover. Yeah, but to suggest that the average footballer playing 60 games a season, if they’re distributed properly, or top end above average football in the Premier League, playing 60 games a season is not a tipping point. It’s the distribution of those 60 games, just

Stephen Smith: the calendar and the congestion, yeah, and I think that we can, we’re advocating for the fact that data can help us to unlock this and to see this coming, and then to understand the risks as they’re happening in real time for the athletes, and then to be able to make better decisions of whether that’s about not playing them in a game, or whether it’s about rotating them through a game, or whether it’s about rotating them through training and talking about certain times.

Jim White: Anytime soon, Steven to finish with, will we be in a situation whereby all the various parties, FIFA, FIFPro, fiefpro, the PFA, yourselves, top end data collectors and the elite players will all be singing from the same hymn sheet. Well, that’s the utopia, right?

Stephen Smith: That’s what we want. That’s what we’re here for. That’s why I started this company, right? And I think that we can, we can help to solve a problem, a real problem, and a problem that impacts careers, impacts revenue, impacts the competitiveness of our leagues. And you know, it’s something that we’re really passionate about. We know that there’s a simple solve here as well. And you know, we just want to do it.

Jim White: Steven, interesting. Kitman labs. Good title, good name. Let’s hear we can get some kind of reaction to this from FIFA, and then we’ll take it further and have you back in here. Would love it. Thank you, Steven. Thank you.