During fall of 2016 Sideline Sports performed a workshop with the Danish soccer club AaB. We had a talk with Jacob Friis, assisting coach for the main team and the club’s Sideline XPS administrator.

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AaB’s Challenge

During 2008 AaB restructured their youth activities, set up goals for technical training and decided what kind of playing style the club would focus on.


“Thanks to external inspiration and a clear development path for the youth clubs, we now have a goal for how to play soccer that is both entertaining and effective”, says Jacob Friis.


The challenge was to get the whole club, from U13 to the main team, to follow the same development path for playing, training and scouting, in an effort to train and develop players that fit into the main team’s goal’s and way of playing.

“We focus on the kind of players we need and we want to be able to keep our style of playing if we develop a good player from our own teams, or if we scout one from somewhere else in the world”, Friis tells us.

How did Sideline XPS help?

Since 2015 every coach and player in AaB’s have their own XPS account with a personal login. At the same time the club also decided that XPS would be the club’s sole data and knowledge foundation.

The structure is made so that all trainers have the same possibility to share experiences, exercises and knowledge with each other from the main team all the way down to U13.

An example of the new way to collect data is the library of outstanding videos that is the foundation of the club’s unique way of playing. The library contains, among other things, recordings from games and how the team is suppose to play, that all coaches can use. Jacob Friis tells us that this helps the coaches better understand AaB’s model and it makes easier for new coaches that the team recruits to understand what the club wants. With in the collection of documents, coaches also share inspirations related to the club’s theme, e.g articles or videos.

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Communication with players

All AaB players have access to their own XPS license with a private login. The coach can easily prepare players for games or training sessions through the XPS app. Before a game videos of individual players can be shared to highlight details that players need to focus on or for scouting of new players.

Friis explains that they don’t want to control the coaches too much, but rather let them decide how much they want to use XPS on their own. The Strength & Conditioning coaches also have their own XPS accounts that allows them to help teams with their physical training and rehabilitation, or let players report about their physical status before and after training sessions, through the app.

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Twice a year AaB has official performance reviews with all players. Player’s development plans are all recorded individual in XPS so that both coaches and players can follow their development over several seasons. This has proven to be very useful for new coaches who still don’t know the players.

On top of the development plans, player’s physical development and testings are recorded and saved during the performance reviews, so that they too can be followed.

The Player Perspective

All players in AaB are well aware of the club’s development path both on and off the pitch and they know what it takes to make it all the way to the main team. The club’s goal is not only to create players who makes it to the main team, but players who can keep playing for the senior team until they are ready to play in bigger leagues. XPS fills an important function for the players who really appreciates the individual feedback they get from their coaches.

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