Football video analysis can succeed where memory fails

Can football video analysis find the gorilla?

Everyone relies on their memory. Memory is how we conduct our day-to-day activities, and how pretty much everything we do works. We are aware of this, too. One of the great thrillers of the last 25 years was Christopher Nolan’s Memento, about a man with no short term memory. Memory is the most reliable thing we have. Except it isn’t, really.

The problem with memory

Recent studies have shown a large variety of fascinating issues with memory. Much has been written about fake childhood memories; researchers have been able to convince people to recollect things that never happened to them, making Inception much more realistic than any of us would like it to be. Most people's memories of their childhood are fake to one degree or another.

But there is an additional complication that makes this relevant to the field of football. It is not just memories of childhoods that get altered. It is best exemplified by this video, which you have probably seen:

Many people don’t see it. Human brains are wired to read only a small amount of information and fill the rest in, because in the vast majority of cases, when it is wrong, it’s not harmful. It doesn’t matter what color the rose bushes are when you jog, because the color of the rose bushes has nothing to do with jogging. Your brain doesn’t care. It doesn’t bother to remember.

Football players and memory

All of this applies to football, right down to “people focusing on a ball will literally miss a gorilla walking in front of them”. 1600 events happen in a game of football, and the players are focused on the ball and on winning. There are strategies that have been used for years to compensate for this. Positions may not seem like a mnemonic device, but part of the reason they exist is so that a player can focus on their own position and not have to worry about what others are doing to the same extent.

Additionally, distorted memories can lead a player to think they were somewhere they weren’t, nearer or farther away from the goal than they were. This means that, without guidance, a player could draw the wrong conclusions from a game. When we interviewed Uri Uzan, who coached and played football during a very long and successful professional career, he said “I still remember the first game I played after I came back from an ACL injury. I thought I gave an amazing performance, but when I watched the video, I was horrified.” Even coaches could be uncertain about a specific detail when so many things happen in a game that they need to be aware of.