Here's a look at some of my prefered #UCLFantasy options ahead of MD7.

⚽️ Goalkeepers

🇧🇷 Ederson €6.0m - Part of a great defence and free of rotation which always is a worry with City players. And who knows, he might even take a penalty soon 😅

#FPLCommunity #UCL

When we started @CourtsideVC in 2016, the biggest question we faced was "Can you really generate venture returns investing in sports?". 5 years later, we have enough data to share. This is the story of how we turned our passion for sports into a business.
👇👇👇👇 👇 👇

First, some context. When I started my sports analytics software company in 2009, I was unable to raise a single dollar in venture capital. I ended up having to cobble together $10K, $25K and $100K checks from individuals to get things going.

At the time, there were no venture funds focused on this space and generalist VCs simply did not believe in the market size of sports companies. As a result, almost all of them ran to the hills when they heard the word "sports".

Even when we got to ~$10M in recurring revenue, there was nobody knocking on our door to try and give us growth capital to see if we could build something big. Ultimately, this forced us to sell short to private equity guys who destroyed the business.

Fast forward to 2016 and we felt the sports, fitness and gaming markets were on the verge of exploding - these were three places where the next generation was spending its money & yet there were no early stage funds setup to fund these entrepreneurs and strategically open doors.

Patterns of play, tactical approaches and theoretical concepts in football - Explained and visualised.

•Phases Of Play
•In possession
•Out of possession

Thread (Part 1)⬇️

•Phases Of Play

•Half-Space

🔴In Possession

•Hold-Up Play

Hyperice, the leading sports recovery company, is set to become the next multi-billion-dollar sports business.

The part you didn't know?

Without Kobe Bryant, it would have never happened.

Time for a thread 👇👇👇

1) Let's start in 2007 — Anthony Katz is a 30-year-old high school teacher and basketball coach in Southern California.

For exercise, he regularly organizes pickup basketball games.

The only problem?

As he got older, the games started to leave him increasingly sore & fatigued.

2) Looking for a way to recover faster & prevent injury, Anthony Katz researched how professional athletes dealt with soreness & fatigue.

"I wanted to get the level of treatment the pros were getting."

A combo of elevation, ice & compression made sense — but ice bags didn't…

3) Despite ice bags being used by athletes all over the world, Anthony Katz saw one glaring issue.

As the ice melts, the bag fills with air — causing it to lose its coldness & compression.

Not to mention, they looked ugly.

Instead, Katz set out to engineer a better solution.

4) In an effort to make his own ice compression wrap, Anthony Katz bought Neoprene from a Huntington Beach wetsuit maker, cut it with a knife, and sewed Velcro to hold the ice bag in place.

But would it work?

Next up — testing & feedback.

Analyzing Manchester United’s stalemate draw over Liverpool in the Premier League through data and tactical analysis: a thread.

MUFC’s plan was to bypass Liverpool’s high press through vertical *quick* passes and long balls to exploit their lack of senior CB’s but — execution was lacking.

An improvement in presence came came from progressing the ball wide but the final ball was still poor.

Taking a look at the flow of passes:

➾ Manchester United had a higher concentration of passes in their own half and posed little to no threat — but built out the back well under pressure.

➾ Improvement: they were able to exploit Liverpool wide through overlaps and cutbacks.

EXAMPLE: #MUFC build out the back in a series of quick forward passes.

This came from Martial dropping deep to carry — essential. Bruno’s trademark backwards flick that takes Fabinho out of the backline and Rashford’s blindside run here was excellent.

Poor final ball.

Let’s take a closer look at the lack of territorial dominance — issues:

(A) While #MUFC were able to improve their suppression — the right flank was very poor with Pogba tucking into the half-spaces.

(B) #MUFC had poor central penetration — more difficult to score.