Why We Developed MatchIQ – An Honest Story from Coaching Practice

As football personal trainers from Switzerland, we – Jan Solak and Nic Keller – have heard the same question over and over for years. From parents. From players. From club coaches. And honestly, until two years ago, we couldn't answer it satisfactorily.

Training tells one story. The game tells another.

We work daily with ambitious players – some in clubs, some in academies, some professionally. Every training session is precisely planned: passing, positioning, decision-making speed, finishing. We film, correct, practice again. In training, players get measurably better.

But then comes the game on the weekend. And we might see the player live for 90 minutes – if at all. What he really does in those 90 minutes long remained in the dark. We could tell the player what we saw. But that was just an impression – not an objective picture.

This gap bothered us. For years.

What the pros have – and everyone else doesn't

We looked at how the big players do it. Manchester City, FC Bayern, FC Basel: all have been using platforms like Wyscout, Hudl, InStat, Spiideo or Pixellot for years. Data on every pass, every movement, every tackle. Heatmaps. Sprint maps. Pressing analyses. Custom highlights for every player.

We tested these tools. And quickly realized: They are not built for us.

• Wyscout: over CHF 5,000 per year, designed for scouting departments of professional clubs, not for coaches in a youth club
• Hudl: you need staff to manually tag every scene – hours of work per game
• InStat: a flood of data without clear preparation for coaches who need to make operational decisions
• Pixellot & VEO: brilliant cameras, but you have to do the analysis yourself externally somewhere

For professionals, all of this is affordable and manageable. For 95% of clubs – amateur clubs, academies, ambitious youth players, football personal trainers like us – it is either unaffordable or unusable.

What has changed in the last two years

We waited. For two years. Hoping that someone would build a platform that we could recommend to our players and clubs.

What has changed during this time is not football – but AI. Suddenly, AI systems could automatically recognize, track, and analyze every player from a simple game video. Without wearables. Without anyone having to spend hours tagging. Without needing an expensive special camera.

That was the moment. The technology was mature. But nobody built a product from it that was made for our world – for amateur clubs, for youth academies, for football personal trainers, for parents who want to know how their child is developing.

So we built it ourselves.

What MatchIQ is – and for whom

MatchIQ is a Swiss AI platform for football video analysis. You upload your game video – whether from a smartphone, GoPro, or an AI sports camera like Pixellot, VEO or Spiideo. Within 24 hours you get:

• Complete player statistics – passes, tackles, interceptions, ball losses, ball gains. Over 20 action types per player.
• Heatmaps and sprint maps – where was each player, when and how fast?
• Pressing analysis – who applied pressure, who didn't?
• Custom highlights – every action as a video, filterable by player or action type
• Player profiles – personal page per player, shareable for scouting, parents or social media

And most importantly: accessible. From CHF 29.90 per game for a single player. CHF 49.90 to CHF 79 for an entire team. No annual subscription. No minimum term. No extra staff you need to hire.

What MatchIQ IS NOT

Just as important as saying what we build – is saying what we don't build.

• Not a replacement for the coach. MatchIQ provides data and videos. What the coach does with it remains their task.
• Not a gut feeling killer. Experience in coaching remains indispensable. Data complements, but does not replace.
• Not a professional league solution. If you're doing Champions League scouting, use Wyscout. We are for the other 99%.
• Not a miracle software. A poorly filmed game provides less good data than a well-filmed one. Garbage in, garbage out – that applies here too.

Who benefits from it

We built MatchIQ for four groups that were forgotten in the existing professional tool world:

Ambitious Players

Who want to know how they really play. Not by gut feeling. Not by table. But by hard data, game by game. And who want to become visible to scouts and clubs with their player profile.

Parents

Who often ask after a game "was he good?" and don't get an honest answer. MatchIQ provides it. Objectively. Data-based. Without coach politics. And highlight videos to be proud of and share.

Coaches

Who have to make decisions about lineups, tactics, and player development. With data instead of gut feeling. And with material for honest player discussions that don't end in "You need to run more," but in concrete training priorities.

Clubs and Academies

Who want to systematically develop their players like the big clubs – but without a huge budget or additional staff. Who want to identify talent earlier and promote it more targeted.

How the workflow looks – in 3 steps

We made MatchIQ as simple as possible. Specifically:

• Step 1 – Upload video. You upload your game video directly to matchiq.360football.ch. Whether from a smartphone (HD is sufficient), GoPro, broadcast camera or an AI sports camera. The format hardly matters.
• Step 2 – AI analyzes. Within 24 hours, our AI analyzes the entire game video – every player is recognized, every action is categorized, all data is processed.
• Step 3 – Use dashboard. You log in and immediately see all statistics, heatmaps, sprint maps and custom highlights. Share, download, use in training.

That's it. No tagging. No external analysis. No additional software to install.

What drives us

We are not a tech company that coincidentally discovered football. We are coaches who coincidentally had to build tech, because otherwise no one would have solved the problem.

Every player deserves the same tools as a professional – just because he doesn't play in the Super League doesn't mean he shouldn't systematically improve. Every team deserves data-driven coaching – not just those with multi-million budgets. And every parent deserves an honest answer about how their child is developing.

That's why MatchIQ exists.

The Swiss football landscape – and our mission

In Switzerland, over 280,000 people actively play football, in more than 1,400 clubs. The majority of these are amateur and youth football. This is where the untapped development potential lies.

A 14-year-old talent in a Swiss provincial club can now objectively get the same data quality as an U17 player at FC Basel. A coach in the 4th league can validate her lineup data-based instead of just intuitively. An academy without a huge scouting budget can discover talents who currently fall through the cracks.

This is not just a tool – this is a small democratization of professional football.

Where we want to go

MatchIQ is just the beginning today. What started as a personal tool from our coaching practice is becoming a platform for all of Swiss and German-speaking football. We continue to build – with every analyzed game, the algorithms get better, the insights deeper, the knowledge more valuable.

Specifically, in the coming months:

• Live multi-game analysis – comparing player performance over an entire season
• Team tactic recognition – automatic detection of formation changes and tactical patterns
• Scouting marketplace – making player profiles directly accessible to scouts and clubs
• Integration with Pixellot & VEO – seamless upload directly from the camera without intermediate steps

We look forward to every player, every team, every coach and every club who joins us on this journey. If you have feedback, a question, a suggestion – write to us. This is just the beginning.