Royal Antwerp Football Club
“The Great Old” Shows What a New Performance Program Can Do.
Introduction
Founded in 1880, Royal Antwerp FC (RAFC) is the oldest football club in Belgium, hence their nickname “The Great Old”. They’ve won four Belgian league titles, three Belgian cups and UEFA Cup runner up. They’re currently members of the Belgian First Division A, the top tier of Belgian football. Dr. Peter Catteeuw serves as RAFC’s Head of Performance for the first, second, and academy teams.
“I knew what we wanted to build. Finding a flexible solution and the right partner was important for us to create something tailor-made.”
Dr. Peter Catteeuw
Head of Performance, Royal Antwerp F.C.
Key Takeaways
The Opportunity
New ownership of RAFC set the club’s sights on winning the Belgium league championship. To do so, they needed not only to rebuild the team and stadium, but truly reinvent themselves. Part of this evolution included creating a world-class human performance program to develop and optimize talent so it could compete with some of the more well-funded teams.
The Challenge
When it came to a human performance program, RAFC was starting from scratch. There were no systems in place for the performance, medical, or tactical staff to capture data and monitor athletes. They needed a flexible and scalable solution that could support the evolution of an ambitious program that would ultimately serve RAFC’s first, second, and academy teams.
The Solution
Smartabase was selected to support RAFC’s medical, performance, athlete
monitoring, and research needs. Digital input forms captured critical medical data while direct integrations with GPS, neuromuscular testing, game stat, and other platforms centralized health and performance data. Real-time dashboards provided staff with a holistic view of their athletes they’d never had before.
The Impact
Smartabase helps RAFC make better decisions to care for their athletes and optimize their readiness. By combining multiple data sets into a centralized and easy-to understand view, performance staff can efficiently collaborate and deliver personalized care to all players across all their teams. The data collected in Smartabase is now being used to explore the application of AI and machine learning to reduce injuries and optimize performance.