Who films, and when

The scenario repeats from one club to the next. Someone gets enthusiastic, films four matches, shows clips that make an impression. Then they are away one Saturday, nobody takes over, and the season ends without a single image. The equipment did not fail, nor did the app: the organisation simply did not exist.

One person in charge per team, not one per club

The most common organisational mistake is to appoint a “club video manager”. That person cannot be on four pitches on the same Saturday, they become a bottleneck, and their absence stops everyone at once.

What works: one person per team, with a trained stand-in. The role needs no technical skill. It comes down to three steps: set up, start, pack away. That is ten minutes before kick-off and five after. Put like that, it can be handed over; put as “we are looking for someone to take care of the video”, it finds nobody.

Who to give it to

• A long-term injured player. The best candidate, by far: he is there every week, he knows the game, and the role gives him a place in the group just when he has lost his own.
• A parent. A good solution in youth categories, on one condition: the equipment and the account belong to the club, never to the parent. Otherwise the videos leave with them when their child changes team.
• A club official or an assistant. The most stable solution, but often the most overloaded. Keep it for clubs where the person does not already have three other roles on match day.

What does not work, on the other hand, is asking the coach. Filming and coaching are two tasks that do not fit in the same pair of hands, and it is the coaching that suffers.

Decide in September what you will not film

A volunteer club that decides to “film everything” gives up before Christmas. A realistic programme is written at the start of the season and accepts its gaps.

A base that holds for a whole season, for one team:

1. Home matches, because the set-up is known and rehearsed. An away match is only filmed if someone has seen the pitch beforehand.
2. Two training sessions a month, targeted on a theme being worked on, and not the whole session.
3. Nothing during tournament periods, when nobody has time. Writing it down avoids guilt, which is what makes people give up for good.

The bag, and the instruction sheet inside

Everything used for filming lives in one bag, which never leaves the club: the tripod or clamp, the power bank, a cable, and a laminated sheet of five lines. The sheet is more than a detail: it is what lets the stand-in take on the role without training.

What it contains, and nothing else: where to put the stand, what height, which account to use, what to do at half-time, who to message if it does not start.

The three most common organisational failures

• The personal phone. As long as the videos live on one individual's device, the club has nothing. The day they leave, or change phone, the season disappears.
• The account in one person's name. Same problem, only worse: the club loses access and cannot even recover what was shared. The account must be in the club's name, with at least two declared administrators.
• Storage that is never sorted. People put it off, the memory fills up on a Saturday in March, and recording stops at the worst moment. Plan the sort once a year, at the end of the season.

What it costs, honestly

In time: fifteen minutes per match for the person who films, and about an hour a week for the coach who uses the footage. That hour is the only cost that counts, and no app removes it. At best, it avoids doubling it into sifting.

In money: a tripod, a battery, and the tool you choose. Neither of those is the item clubs underestimate most. That is storage over several seasons, which nobody talks about before the second year.