Espoon Palloseura (EPS), one of Finland’s largest football clubs, has been working with XPS Network for over a year. The partnership has allowed EPS to streamline its coaching processes, unify methodologies across teams, and strengthen its focus on individual player development.

Centralising Processes and Raising Professional Standards

For EPS, one of the biggest challenges was bringing together the many moving parts of a modern football academy. With hundreds of players and coaches involved, ensuring consistency and collaboration was essential.

“Centralising everything has been key,” says Stefan Wikström, Technical Director at EPS. “XPS serves as a hub, combining planning, reporting, and monitoring. It connects different levels of the coaching process: the head coach, individual coaches, goalkeeper coaching, physical coaching, etc. It has helped us narrow things down and unify how we work. As a consequence, it also creates positive pressure for all coaches to raise their professionalism in the planning process and follow club methodology, as well as helping them learn from each other.”

This centralisation has also made communication more effective. “By unifying everything, we automatically facilitated discussions between players and coaches. It has cut out non-essential chat,” adds Wikström.

Supporting EPS’s Player-Centred Development Model

EPS’s philosophy is clear: development happens at the individual level, even within a team context. “We believe that individuals are what we actually coach, not teams. But we do it in the setting of the team,” explains Wikström. “So individual player development happens within the collective team (and club) context. For that to work, we need very clear models of how we operate, as well as very clear and efficient tools to apply those models.”

XPS has become central to putting this philosophy into practice. EPS began by moving all team planning and calendars into the system, ensuring every coach was on board. “Toni from XPS helped us at every step we needed him,” says Wikström. This process was combined with clarifying EPS’s training model, making the transition smooth and purposeful.

From there, the club built ‘player cards’ within XPS, forming the backbone of their individual development programme, Project Players. These cards centralise stats, profiles, development plans, and player-coach discussions – making information accessible across the academy.

Looking ahead, EPS plans to integrate game data into XPS. “Game data from different sources will be linked directly to the players’ profiles to track development where it should actually happen – in the game,” says Wikström.

Driving Efficiency Across the Academy

For EPS, the benefits of XPS are felt at every level of the organisation. Team coaches rely on it for planning exercises and monitoring individuals, while physical coaches use it for everything from individualised strength programmes to creating shared monitoring platforms. For heads of coaching and the technical director, XPS offers the ability to track what is happening across the club and support processes in real time.

As Wikström puts it: “XPS is like our all-in-one toolbox: it keeps everyone aligned while making it easier to focus on what really matters: developing players.”

Toni Kalio, Sales Director at Sideline Sports, adds: “What I really value in our cooperation with EPS is how the club has embraced XPS as part of their own way of working. They’ve shown that when the coaching staff commits to one shared system, it creates real clarity and consistency across all levels. For me, it’s been inspiring to follow their journey and support them in putting player development at the very centre of everything they do.”

With game data integration on the horizon, EPS is determined to remain at the forefront of individual player development in Finland and XPS Network will continue to be a central part of that journey.

XPS Network in 30 seconds

If you have any questions or would like to try XPS Network, please contact Toni Kalio (for Finnish coaches & clubs) or our sales team at sales@sidelinesports.com.