At AVID Soccer, we consider the  Innovative Product of the Year to be our most prestigious award.  We take this so seriously, that we didn't even issue the award in 2008 because we didn't find a worthy nominee.

This year, we have had no such concern.  We have selected three different technologies that all have great potential to advance our sport in different ways. 

2010 brought us the Microsoft Kinect.  On the surface, this doesn't seem to relate to football.  That is especially true for those that have played the horrible version of soccer in the Kinect Sports game.  However, it has more chance to improve fitness than any other console based product we have ever seen.  The amount of effort and fun that goes along with playing almost any of the Kinect games will improve fitness and explosive movement.  Beyond that, the introduction of open-source PC drivers for Kinect mean that it can be developed into a true training tool for form.  We have great hopes that academies will develop a goalkeeper training program that uses the Kinect to train proper form.

adidas has given us the miCoach training system.  This system consists of devices (accelerometer for stride measurements, heart rate monitor, zone band, cloud based application and mobile (Blackberry and iPhone) app).  These things can be used independently or in combination to achieve the desired results.  The mobile app is even free.  What sets miCoach apart from Nike+ or the myriad of other mobile fitness apps is the adidas Coaching Circle.  This allows a coach or trainer to view the results of outside training sessions including distance, elevation changes, heart rates, etc. giving real insight into a players effort.

Moving into pure coaching, TactX is a rendering engine to training sessions.  It allows the coach to build 2d drills, game simulations and set plays then render them in 3d.  It is an ideal tool for creating training videos (far less than the cost of professional players to perform the same drills), developing and demonstrating tactical situations, and analyzing team tendencies.  The rendered video can be viewed in 2d or 3d, from multiple angles, and customized.

Our selection, for the innovative product most likely to improve the sport is the adidas miCoach system.  The combination of individual training and the coaching circle sets miCoach apart from all of the other training apps and systems.