Beat that cold like Barça...

News
By published

Got a smartphone yet? Good, because technology used by Europe’s top clubs is now available to you

Football has found a cure for the sickie. Pretending to splutter down the phone will no longer suffice thanks to the arrival of the Omegawave Pro Mobile, which allows suspicious gaffers to equip their players’ diamond-encrusted mobiles with a ‘physiological assessment’ app.

Using a chest belt and electrodes for your forehead and hand, the Omegawave Pro Mobile can measure an athlete’s cardiac, metabolic and central nervous systems in two minutes.

Once the player has uploaded their stats from their phone to the internet, the club’s backroom staff can browse the results from anywhere at any time.

With this information coaches can decide on the right volume, intensity and type of training for each player – which, of course, should stop them getting ill or injured in the first place.

Bjorn Rekelhof, Ajax’s strength and condition coach, considers the mobile service to be his “objective eye”, saying: “It helps me plan and adjust training programmes to achieve optimal performance and to avoid injuries.”

But don’t worry, it’s unlikely you will be caught out for being hungover on a Sunday morning. Subscription to the system costs £350 per player, per year, while the sensor set is £199 and the coach’s desktop software a rather more costly £3,900. Phew.

The Omegawave Pro Mobile is available on Android phones. An iPhone app is due for release soon.