in 1997 a young Norwegian researcher named Gia Jord began asking a simple but revolutionary question what separates good footballers from the truly great [Applause] [Music] ones armed with just a notebook a vcr and hours of match footage J it began documenting something no one was talking about back then scanning that subtle constant checking of a player surroundings before the ball even arrives at their feet fast forward to today and this one skill rooted in decades of research has become the secret weapon of football's biggest stars so what is scanning how does it shape a game most importantly how can it make you a better player let's dive into the science and history of scanning and uncover how it's revolutionizing football at every [Applause] level when G began recording Premier League players some two decades ago there was one player out of 117 that he watched that stood out to him that was Chelsea's Frank Lampard a scan can be defined as when a player temporarily takes their eyes off the ball to prepare for actions went on the ball and Lampard was doing this more often than any of the other 116 players Jordan watched in the 10 seconds before receiving the ball Lampard was scanning an average of 6.2 times an incredibly high amount and I follow Frank Lambert for 90 minutes so then what you see with him is you know he was amazing at this this habit was no doubt ingrained in Lampard at an early age he tells the story of how his dad used to sit in the stands when he was playing for West Ham academy pictures pictures and yell at Frank always reminding him to check his shoulders taking snapshots of his surroundings since jett's initial research on the topic of scanning there have been over 10 scientific papers published and another 25 student Theses and visitations these Studies have come to some pretty amazing conclusions a higher scan rate is linked with both higher pass completion and an increase in Progressive forward passes in other words if you scan more you're more likely to keep hold of the ball for your team while also making more successful dangerous forward passes but jordet noticed something else any player can turn their head rapidly trying to scan in fact many do but this doesn't always help them scan at the wrong moment when a ball is being touched or kicked you could miss Vital Information about the speed and direction of the ball and end up making mistakes was when the ball is being touched by a player then the ball will typically you know change direction change speed it will stop it will be passed and so forth so that particular moment when the ball is touched it's incredibly important to look at the ball but that also means that in between those moments so when the ball is being in between touches when a player has the ball or when the ball is heading from player a to player B this is a time where you don't really need to look look at the ball because there's nothing interesting nothing new happening with the ball so at that point look away from the ball and if you look at top players and they're probably not aware of this they're like a clock you know they're it's it's like a metronome like they look at the ball when the ball is being touched and they look away from the ball between touch if you look at the best players in the world they have an incredible timing to their scans making sure to look away from the ball only in those moments where the ball is already in transition either after a touch has been taken or after a pass has been made during the World Cup final between Argentina and France we spent the entire game recording the details of every single liel Messi scan Messi recorded a total of 676 scans during the final scanning at an average rate of 3.4 times every time before receiving the ball for a forward those numbers are exceptional and way above that of your typical Premier League Striker but compared to some of the world's best Central midfielders there's still a way off what sets Messi apart from most though is the quality and speed of his scans his scan timing is absolutely Flawless while he also has an ability to scan and gather information at a rate much faster than others here we see Messi a few milliseconds ahead of Mao in his scanning it's only fractions different but in a game of fine margins it's these details that can make all the difference another player who exciled in this area is former Juventus man and Rea poo perlo's scanning ability was legendary and it played a huge role in his effortless control of games his teammates often described how he barely needed to communicate verbally his constant head movements allowed him to dictate the game silently this story of a hilarious training ground encounter between pero and his former AC Milan teammate Kevin Prince boang perfectly illustrates this so I come to practice I was like Hey pass me the P after one week he takes me on the other side he gets one player who speaks English to translate he said tell him do not shout if you shout even the opponent knows he's free if he's free tell him I will see him hero himself spoke about this in his autobiography I Think Therefore I Play where he explained how he understood there is a secret rather than looking downfield at his forwards directly he would instead focus on the space between him and them he compared his way of seeing the game to a chess Grandmaster always anticipating moves before they happened by taking in this information at the correct moment players like Polo and Messi set themselves up for Success when on the ball it allows them to see a pressing opponent get their body in the right shape to turn or know exactly where to play their next pass a skill which according to C fabrigas is absolutely essential the most important thing in football is to know your next pass febas wasn't a bad scanner either in fact he holds the record for the second highest scan rate ever recorded during Professor jit's research averaging 7.6 scans each time before receed the ball there's only one man that comes out ahead of him and that's his former Spanish teammate chvy Hernandez who wants averaged an incredible 8.3 scans before receiving the ball in one game as a young player chvy has spoken about being scared of the physically Superior players around him who were much bigger and much stronger so his way of making sure they couldn't touch him was to always know where they were coming from this scanning habit stuck and even earn shaviv nickname The Exorcist girl now what she did I don't turn my head 360° like her chvy said but there are games where I have rotated it more than 500 times it's like an obsession not everyone is like chavy though even at the highest level of the game there are still plenty of top players who fail to scam just take a look at jolon getting pickpocketed in newcastle's 1-1 draw with Man City back in September with the Brazilian failing to see the pressing svino coming in from behind and then take this Netherlands goal from the World Cup back in 201 22 before the cross is even made every single defending player is caught ball watching they all fail to see dri at the back post allowing him to tap in the cross for an easy goal these mistakes aren't isolated incidents either a study on the 2020 European Championship found that 38% of all goals conceded stemmed from poor awareness whether due to a closed body shape a failure to scan the field or simply losing track of an opponent so it's clear that scanning is a skill that the world's best players EX execute better than most but how much information the players actually take in when they scan According to some of Professor Jord studies most scans only last for around half a second J it has even said that from a single scan you're probably not typically picking up the whole pitch what you're seeing is probably more what you would call proximal information so just information immediately around you you'll probably pick up colors a teammate an opponent and you'll definitely see someone here and an opening there but then of course these players don't just do one Scan they typically do more scans so they see pictures seaming together so they get a bigger feel for what's happening around them something that can also help massively in completing this pcture for players is the very final Scan they make before receiving the ball often called the critical scan this usually takes place as the ball is already moving towards a player and it allows them to complete one final snapshot of what's around with the most upto-date information before making their next decision this skill is an exceptionally Hard One to master and one that many players at the top level still fail to execute properly to give you an example of how the critical scan can provide players with the most up-to-date information helping to inform their decision- making take a look at this clip of van djk in this situation van djk was all set to play a pass here to his teammate but he performs a critical scan as the ball is moving towards him and spots this Athletico player already running at high speed about to press using this information he changes his decision and decides to play a ball over the top of this player player bypassing the press and helping Liverpool to launch an attack some players are far more gifted than others at this skill zidan was an absolute Master a often still able to perform a critical scan even when the ball was flying towards him out of the air while in more recent times players like Martin Ard have shown just how Adept they are at it with a Norwegian even managing to put off a double critical scan for this assist against Brighton last season by 2017 G its research had gained a worldwide recognition including the attention of Arsenal manager arson Wenger how do I call that and I call that scanning and I try to see what happens to a player in the 10 seconds before he gets the ball and we uh made a complete study with a Norwegian University and in fact what is very interesting is that the good players the very good players scan six to eight times in the last 10 seconds before they get the ball during his final season as Arsenal manager Wenger invited jordet to study scanning at Arsenal jordet would go on to film every single home game analyzing 27 players in total and covering over 10,000 ball possessions the research uncovered a robust link between scanning and performance resulting in Wenger adopting more scanning drills and practices in training but what does scanning training actually look like there are many drills that can help to improve scanning at the team level or indeed with just two or three other players but we'll save sharing those for another video if you're like many young players out there you probably spend a large amount of time training alone and only have a limited amount of time that you can dedicate to certain areas of your game so we want to provide you with solutions that are both effective and conscious of your time one super easy way to first stop building a scanning habit is to just simply start scanning before and after every pass if you look at Tottenham star Youngman son he still does this in warm-ups even to this day making sure that scanning is top of mind and constantly practiced another option is the tool that we've spent over 5 years developing here at be your best it's used by thousands of pro and amateur players in clubs all around the world from barusa Dortmund to wolves to Martin Edgard to Romeo rvia be your best is virtual reality football training designed to improve your scanning Vision decision making and all round game intelligence skills it enables players to practice their scanning in thousands of scenarios recreated from professional games last season during a defensive injury crisis Real Madrid called upon their Central midfielder aurelan Chui to fill in a center back during an away game against osasuna chuani posted a video on his Tik Tok before the game of him preparing for the match by training in VR he was playing through scenarios from the perspective of a central Defender priming himself for typical situations he might find himself in during the 90 minutes Real Madrid went on to win the game 3-0 with chuain putting get in a man of the match performance at Center back the product has also been used successfully by many teams one of them being the German under 17 national team a few years back before the European Championship Victory the players trained in VR over a period of 9 weeks prior to the tournament before going on to win the Championships the study conducted during their use found that the players who trained would be your best had improved their scan rate by an impressive 28% now we're not promising that this will transform your game or turn you into Messi Lampard or many of the other great scanners who have featured in this video but if you use be your best regularly and commit to the training it will give you those marginal percentage gains that can make all the difference at the very top level to get started you just need to own a meta Quest VR headset the models that we currently support are the Quest 2 3 or 3s you can then go to bebest.com where you can create an account choose your membership and download the app to your headset thank you for joining us for this video we will see you next time