Jason AndersonS the South Africa Football Association’s (SAFA) head of digitalS has a dream that in his lifetime Bafana Bafana can win the World CupS and that the data capture system he is helping install can be a big part of doing it.

Being a tech guyS let’s answer the first question bound to arise � noS he does not mean on PlayStation.

And data capture is something that happens in an office. With desks. And filing cabinets. So how can it win a World Cup? The answer is: it can’t alone. But as a starting pointS there is more to it than meets the eyeS and it can be a part of a revolution in South African football.

Anderson heads the huge task of implementing the player registration and competition systems for currently the top amateur leaguesS the ABC Motsepe and SAB leagues (third and fourth divisions). Eventually Safa aims to capture the 2S5 million to 5 million SA senior and junior men’s and women’s footballers.

The fact that Safa do not have a definite numberS aloneS is the first aspect the project aims to correct.

That’s the real heart of this MySafa.net project � at the core of it is a database of registered football players in South AfricaS Anderson says.

He addsS almost sheepishlyS aware how idealistic he sounds: It’s not impossible for Bafana Bafana to win a World Cup if you look at what IcelandS with a population of 300S000S did at Euro 2016S following that up with World Cup qualifying.

If Greece can win the Euro and Leicester City the EPLS I’m sure BafanaS with the level of love for the game people in South Africa haveS and gene pool of athletesS can win a Wold Cup.

OK then. But how does data capture digitally of South Africa’s millions of players impact on that on a football field?

The first and most obvious benefit is to cut down on age-cheatingS cheating of players playing in more than one league or teamS and identity cheating. Once the system is in all the leagues � right nowS Anderson is celebrating reaching 100S000 players captured by MayS having started in SeptemberS and expects the process to take up to four years � there is the talent identification aspect as a result of being able to digitally track performing players.

Anderson worked as a tech consultant for FIFA for 15 yearsS came to SA in the 2010 World CupS met and married his wife hereS and relocated from Zurich in 2013. He began to model the digital system where he lives in Port ElizabethS with Safa-Nelson Mandela Bay.

By SeptemberS Safa launched a sort of version 2S and started registering all the Motsepe and SAB leagues.

The big thing was we changed the player cardsS which used to be printed on desktop printers all around the associationS from LFAs to regional.

Now all cards come out of MySafa through a commercial printer in Johannesburg. They’re much higher quality cards and harder to forge or tamper with � they’re reverse printed on a filmS which is laid down on a card.

They are also cheaper at R6 a cardS compared to R10 to R15 before. If you consider the numbers we’re dealing withS it’s millions of Rands saved. We also have a MySafa verifier downloadable appS so if there’s a suspicion a card has been tampered with you can scan the QR [square digital bar] code and it brings up the player’s details and his picture. The info caught on the software includes scanned ID documentsS registration forms and the player’s photoS and if they were registered within that league’s window.

There used to be so many different forms of cheating around football in SAS and honestly there still are. But we’ve been able to fight a number of them with the softwareS where everybody entered is checked against Home Affairs. We send the details to Home Affairs via a live API (application programming interface) � birth dateS gender � so we can check if the ID number is validS if it’s for a live person and who that person is.

So there’s no more using your brother’s ID to register in multiple leagues. And for the first time we have a national database. Before if you wanted to play in an LFA and on an SAB League teamS for instanceS which is against the rulesS there wasn’t much chance of being caught because those two registrations weren’t connected.

And because we’ve been able to prevent those registrations at the beginning of a league season we’ve been able to prevent a lot of the disciplinary cases.

We aim to capture every South African footballer within four years. We started in September and captured our 100 000th player in May. There is a long way to 2S5 million. We’re going at 10 000 to 20 000 a month. We’re not concerned with Bafana or Banyana today. But we feel that in 10 years we can completely change the way talent has been identifiedS and have a massive impact on the national teams’ quality. After Germany crashed out in the first round at Euro 2000S they went home and looked at how they do everythingS including talent identification. Underpinning it all were these technology projects.

With just 100S000 players capturedS and not yet in a detailed formS Anderson’s system has a long way to go to be a functioning talent identification project.

The first step is registration. So we’re probably one step into a six-step processS he said.

We know who’s playing on each teamS we set the fixturesS capture the results and publish them and logs [on MySafa.net].

Now we at least know where our registered players areS and which clubs are most successfulS so we already have analytics built in so that we can track thoseS and start to see who the most successful amateur coaches in SA areS for example.

Within the next three weeks we will release the match reporting data capture featuresS so we’ll be able to do the basics of setting team sheetsS substitutionsS cardsS goal-scorers. Then we will be able to at least identify who the top U-9 scorers are in SA.

One of the last steps is we will release a coaching app early next year to allow coaches to communicate with team membersS set a practise schedule and capture what happened with that practice. Again we’ll be able to leverage all that in our talent identification information.

Once we get thereS we’ll have a mature system.

Source: South African Football Association