SAS & NFF awarded prize for creativity and innovation within organizational sports analytics

 The Union of European Football Association (UEFA) has awarded The Norwegian Football Federation (NFF) the 2021 Grow Award for Creativity and Innovation in the category Data and Insight in Europe.

Using machine learning, NFF set out to better understand what makes some football clubs more successful in recruiting and retaining youth players in the amateur leagues. 

It's not for everyone to win a UEFA award, and even less likely when you retired from football before becoming a PRO. For us involved in this project we were all more than an inch away from the dream of ever winning anything starting with UEFA. So, to see a legend like Luis Figo announcing our project with NFF a UEFA winner is a fantastic surprise and acknowledgment of our work and partnership with NFF. Individual players need to develop their skills on the field, but in developing the sport, much work must be done off the pitch too acknowledgement example.

NFF have worked on visualizing insight into the quality of clubs in amateur football for some time. In 2020, I was challenged on how to elevate the work NFF were doing on data and insight. The challenge came from Andre Paulsen whom leads this work in NFF. First of all, he was looking for proof-of-value in use of more advanced analytics and machine learning into NFF's data. Together we defined a co-project on SAS technology, using data from NFF and the Norwegian Sports Federation (NIF).

In both Norway and Europe, amateur football - or grassroot football - is a big topic where new articles are constantly being written and discussions formed. Amateur Football is a key priority to NFF as part of a long-term strategy in the development of the sport in Norway. But also, in the creation of a positive arena for exercise and socialization in the broader communities across the country. The value proposition is important to the broader national football community and to our society in general. As football enthusiasts ourselves, it was a pleasure to be involved in this project where the team used Machine learning and visualization in SAS Viya to build a bridge between NFF's massive access to data and their ability to create actionable insight in real time.

NFF and SAS would like to jointly take the opportunity to give a special kudos to our #SASInterns Joakim Martinsen and Kashmeel Bisseru from the MSc in Business Analytics and to our partnership with BI Norwegian Business School. In their internship with SAS in 2020 they were given a big responsibility in preparing data, setting up machine learning and to build relevant visualizations. They also needed to build a value presentation based on their work which was further refined by NFF for internal use, and which was later pitched to UEFA.

After Joakim and Kashmeel's internship with us last fall, Joakim wrote the following in his first LinkedIn article:

"...For one to succeed, it is important to have supporters and a network around us, which quickly turned out to be part of the SAS culture. By acquiring a mentor and putting ourselves on a team with representatives from different departments, we experienced the work as real and important, and not - just an internship...." (Link to article here).

The award is important for NFF and for Norwegian amateur football itself. Equally important is the inspiration we hope this award gives Joakim and Kashmeel in their fresh careers, and to new generations of #SASInterns in the work you will do both in your internships with us, and in other projects you are asked to engage in the years ahead. You will not always achieve UEFA awards for the work you do. Thus, with just cause, personal and team knowledge of the impact you make to whatever organization or cause you chose to engage in should give great value and satisfaction in itself. So be aware of your impact and share your experiences as you learn and grow. And know you are always welcome to engage your ideas with us at SAS Institute if you ever feel we could achieve positive impact together. (..or just another UEFA award is fine to