Tuesday, September 12, 2023

The man behind Odisha FC’s performance and recruitment : Abhijit Bharali

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Despite all the chaos going on due to the Coronavirus Pandemic around the globe, the summer has been a great phase for the Indian football Transfer Market and a team who has caught alot of attention in the transfer market is Odisha FC.

Next up we have an unsung hero who plays a vital role in Odisha FC’s back room staff, Mr. Abhijit Bharali who works an an Performance and recruitment analyst at Odisha. So, we caught up with him to bring his work into limelight and to know more about what happens behind the scenes. So, let’s get started.

Q. What were the hurdles you faced when you became a journalist and then a performance analyst?
Abhijit : After completing my engineering I wanted to get into Indian football. The Under 17 World Cup was around the corner and I really wanted to be a part of that event and somehow I got lucky enough and Sportskeeda hired me to go to the stadiums and cover the event. It was a short stint of journalism for like 3-4 months and from there on it was more of networking and building good relationship with people and that is how it led me down this route.

Q. How was your life when you were a journalist? What has changed now ?
Abhijit : Earlier it was kind of something that I couldn’t make a direct impact on what happened on the pitch and now I have a say on what happens of the pitch. Earlier it was easier for me to do whatever I wanted to write but now I need to follow a set of rules and protocols and that is what our system demands.

Q. What is the role of a performance Analyst?
Abhijit : In my role, the main aspect of performance analysis is opposition analysis, so I spend lots of hours looking into opposition matches throughout the season. Apart from that, what I also do is I look at our own matches to inform the game plan of coaches, and also help out the S&C coach in analysing performance data. You can also always see me filming our matches and training sessions. I work as a team with the coaching staff and we all work together in our various roles to build a game plan.