Play like Messi; design of a product for making ball mastery exercises more fun.

Abstract

Almost every youth football player dreams about being as good as very technical skilled football players, like Messi. Coaches often believe that these great players are simply gifted and that their skills are beyond the average player. Wiel Coerver, a Dutch football manager, analyzed these great players in slow motion video and came to the conclusion that many of their skills could be broken down and taught to most players, regardless of age or experience. Aiming to improve individual football skills and produce better attacking players and teams, Coerver developed a way to teach football. The foundation of the Coerver method is ball mastery. Ball mastery exercises are designed to get a feeling with the ball and to use all parts of the feet. His method is worldwide the most used skill teaching program and a lot of famous clubs like Arsenal, AC Milan and Real Madrid use his method in their academy programs. The philosophy behind the method is that a youth player can develop his technique only if he has come sufficiently enough in contact with the ball during his football education. But the amount of contacts with the ball during football matches and football practices doesn’t suffice. To become a better player they need to practice at home. At the most youth players train two hours a week and play one short match in the weekend. Naturally there are children who apart from this kick a ball now and then. But children nowadays have less free time and spend their time on other activities than sport, like watching television. Most young football players nowadays are not motivated to do ball mastery exercises on a regular base. Repeating the same exercise over and over again requires a lot of effort and is not fun. And fun is the single most important element in developing a football player. First the Coerver method was analyzed. The analysis showed what really was important about the exercises. The analysis showed what real ball control is and what it takes to become as skilled as Messi. Next a literature study of several motivational theories was performed. Children have different motivations for participating in sports. The study was performed in order to know how to motivate children to do ball mastery exercises. The analysis showed the different components of motivation and how theses can be applied in the project. The next phase was the idea generation phase. I came up with several ideas. The two best ideas were chosen to develop further into concepts. Two prototypes of the concepts were developed to test the concepts. Based on these tests a decission was made to develop one concept further into a detailed product design. The detailing phase embodies the final product design. The concept was optimalized and detailed. A prototype of the concept was developed to perform a user test. The last part of the project embodies the marketing strategy of the product. A business case was written in which the market is explained and how the product will be positioned within this market.