Penplusmarch182014

TUESDAY 18 MARCH 2014 • [email protected] • www.thepeninsulaqatar.com • 4455 7741 inside Mr. Peabody COMMUNITY revs past • The Next Generation School celebrates Speed, 300 Pakistan Day P | 4 P | 8-9 ARCHAEOLOGY • Discovery of first temple in the region The Dutch football club Faja Lobi KDS plays all its home matches on P | 6 an artificial turf on the roof top of a supermarket store parking lot. RECIPE CONTEST • Send in your best recipe and win a dinner voucher for two P | 7 HEALTH • Post-surgery survival linked to hospital ROOF TOP P | 11 TECHNOLOGY • Apps aid FOOTBALL fashionistas to find desired clothing P | 12 Learn Arabic • Learn commonly used Arabic words and their meanings P | 13 2 PLUS | TUESDAY 18 MARCH 2014 COVER STORY Dutch innovations on football pitch BY ARMSTRONG VAS pitch materialises out of a necessity The out-of-the-box concept is one of of technological advances in football. say officials of IKEA, the company that the several initiatives the three-time The countries top clubs all have he idea of football match on constructed the artificial turf pitch on FIFA World Cup runners-up have integrated new innovative training the roof top of a building will the roof top. launched in football. methods to excel and break new be shot down as bizarre and In the beginning of 2012, IKEA and The country known for its tulips, grounds. Timpossible in most places. the city of Utrecht in the Netherlands chess and wind mills have devised Ajax, where Total Football took But not for innovative Dutch. They gave the go-ahead for the expansion innovative solutions in many walks of birth, is using SmartGoals in their have made it happen. of the IKEA store in Utrecht. The life — water control to protect half the training methods at their youth Welcome to the Netherlands city of project was special because due to the country against the risk of flooding is academy. Utrecht, home to Faja Lobi KDS, an limited space available in the area, one of them. SmartGoals as a coaching tool, amateur club playing in the sixth level different elements had to be arranged Living in a densely populated delta which will be officially launched next of eight-tier amateur division of Dutch in a multilayered way, especially the below sea level, the Dutch were forced month, aims to make training a fun Football League. The club plays all its solution for the two fields with FIFA 2 centuries back to develop knowledge filled one. home matches on the artificial turf on classification for soccer club Faja Lobi and experience in finding high- Fun is the key aspect of the roof top of a parking lot of a super KDS on the roof of the IKEA parking quality, sustainable and affordable SmartGoals. Fun equals motivation market store. house, says John van de Weg of Knevel solutions to protect delta areas and and motivation equals development. The football field at Faja Lobi KDS Architecten. enable life. It improves skills like; overview, is one of the several innovative ideas The soccer fields have been executed Innovations have had an impact technique, speed, coordination, which the Dutch are using in various with light layers for water storage on football too. The Dutch football is reaction and communication. That walks of life as they aim to utilize the instead of a traditional heavy package also pioneers of the influential tactical is why SmartGoals are suitable for limited land resources in the best between the roof deck and synthetic Total Football which spiced up the everyone at every level. The First possible way in a small country spread turf top layer. Windbreak cloth is Jogo Bonita at the 1974 World Cup. team of Ajax Amsterdam uses a over an area of 33,800 sqkm and with placed up to a height of seven meters The country home to top clubs prototype of SmartGoals twice a a population of 16,839,786. along the roof edges around the soccer like Ajax, PSV Eindhoven and week, says Ralf van Oosterhout of The idea to construct a football fields, he adds. Feyenoord is set for yet another wave SmartGoals. PLUS | TUESDAY 18 MARCH 2014 3 SmartGoals helps to create fast dynamic football with your team. SmartGoals can be used to devise complete training sessions with warming-up exercises, moves and skills training, passing and receiving, positional games, fitness training, finishing exercises and small team matches, Van Oosterhout explained. Everyone can work with the SmartGoals, no computers, laptops or tablets are required. With the SmartRemote controlling the SmartGoals is as easy as zapping through the channels of your TV, he added. It excites players, it challenges players and you can use it in so many ways at every level, says Rene Meulensteen coach at Fulham FC. Ajax are not the only club which is using the technology advances in their pursuit for excellence, PSV Eindhoven is the other one. At the PSV Field Lab a bib enables heart rates to be monitored in real time. The potential applications of real- time positioning and heart-rate adjust the physical exertion training reading go beyond cleverer training programme to the individual. It’s all and improved soccer schooling. a matter of cutting the programme The Dutch are continuously on the lookout for The system can easily and to the strain a particular person can innovation in all walks of life and researchers automatically determine the speed accommodate. It helps reduce injury and even the acceleration of the due to overexertion, the official added. attached to universities young and old are players. A new feature of this Field The research is investigating how constantly working on projects to give the Lab at PSV is the bib that enables top soccer players use their eyes, and heart rates to be monitored in real it has become clear that the talent that country an edge in various sectors. time. Previously this data could only younger soccer players possess can be be read after the training session, says revealed to a large extent to where they Peter Rovers, Manager Marketing, look during the game, Rovers said. Media, Merchandising and Business This could result in being able to to help the club’s youth development co-create and/or install new product Development at PSV Eindhoven. recognise talent that much more players make the move to the first prototypes or production models in It allows the club trainers, to quickly. PSV expects these advances team more quickly, and then the the field-lab where the end-users can investments will be rewarded, he use and test them as part of regular added. sports activity. A lab manager and The Dutch are continuously on the embedded scientist are part of the lookout for innovation in all walks set up, informed Florence Bongers of life and researchers attached Project Manager at IPC Sports and to universities young and old are Technology. constantly working on projects to give Although no football specific the country an edge in various sectors. InnoSportLabs has been set up yet, the At the sports and medicine plan is to have one in the near future department of Utrecht University a as Dutch clubs aim to gain an edge in group of researchers is working on the highly competitive winner takes the project to identify the cause of its all football market. the hamstring injuries, the common THE PENINSULA one for football, and to take preventive steps to minimise or reduce the hamstring injuries. The country also aims to mix sports PSV Field Lab and technology for the greater success t De Herdgang, the training in international sports events and also complex of PSV in Eindhoven, an active lifestyle for its citizens. Aa youth team can be seen It has set up an Olympic Plan to gain regularly wearing special bibs with a structural position among the world’s a transponder, a transmitter that SmartGoals top ten sporting nations by 2028. As communicates with a number of martGoals are small gates that use wireless technology to communicate part of the plan, they have set up electronic beacons positioned around with each other in combination with motion sensors. Lights indicate which innovative field-labs/InnoSportLabs, the periphery of the pitch. Since the SSmartGoals players have to run, dribble, pass or score through. Players which mix science and technology for communication involves several of can only score in the SmartGoals with illuminated lights. After scoring the sports excellence. these beacons, the computer can lights of that particular SmartGoal go out and the lights on a new, random InnoSportLabs has been launched calculate the position of the players to SmartGoal will illuminate. Players have to react to the different SmartGoals in 12 sports namely athletics, archery, an accuracy of five centimetres. With that light up ñ forcing them to keep a good overview and react quickly to the bobsleigh, volleyball, table tennis, each point measured being coupled new scoring opportunities. handball, wheelchair basketball, to a point in time, the system can The youngest amateur players love playing with SmartGoals, just because badminton and boxing, while the easily and automatically determine itís more fun to train with SmartGoals than other common training. football and hockey one is at the the speed and even the acceleration The concept SmartGoals is designed by two students Industrial Design construction stage. of the players. This kind of technology (Chris Heger and Sjef Fransen) and their teacher Mark de Graaf. They A field-lab/InnoSportLab for helps to determine the position, clear wanted to add more fun in training with the use of technology.

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