Manolo Vazquez was celebrating his 8th birthday, surrounded by family and friends, when Andrés Iniesta, one of Spain’s most celebrated midfielders, scored the goal that made his country world champion for the first time.

It was the 2010 World Cup final, and a night Vazquez would never forget.

Growing up, soccer was part of his family's everyday life. His father, Ramon Vazquez Garcia, played for the Spanish national team in the 1980s, and today, one of Manolo’s older brothers plays professionally for a club in Portugal. Vazquez, the youngest of five, spent much of his childhood in a soccer uniform at practices and at matches on the weekend.

“I can’t imagine my life without soccer,” Vazquez said.

The sport eventually carried Vazquez from Alcalá de Guadaíra, Spain, to Las Vegas, where he is now an information systems major at Lee Business School and incoming captain of the UNLV men’s soccer team.

This summer, as the World Cup returned to North America, Vazquez found he wasn't just watching soccer as a fan anymore. His UNLV coursework had given him a new perspective on the game.

“Now I think about the data, the video analysis, the people making decisions behind the scenes, and all the information that goes into the game,” Vazquez said.

Reading the Game

Before Vazquez studied systems in a classroom, he was learning to read them on the field: where teammates move, how opponents respond, and how one decision can change the next.

When asked which professional player most resembles his style, he points to Rodrigo Hernández Cascante, known simply as Rodri, the Spanish midfielder known for controlling the tempo of a match without always drawing the loudest attention.

“I think I am analytical,” Vazquez said. “I like to understand what is happening in the game, not just with the ball but around it.”

What he admires in Rodri is not flash, but control.

“He is always thinking,” Vazquez said. “He gives balance to the team. Maybe he is not the player everyone is watching all the time, but he helps everything work.”

The Game Behind the Game

On UNLV's soccer team, practice does not end when players leave Peter Johann Memorial Field. Training data helps players and coaches analyze performance. 

“The technology can show where you’ve been on the field, how much distance you covered, your speed, your sprints, how many times you slowed down or changed direction,” he said. 

His information systems classes have made him think differently about what those numbers actually mean. Data is not useful just because it exists. Someone has to understand where it came from, whether it can be trusted, and how a system should present it so people can make better decisions.

“In information systems, you learn that data by itself is not enough,” Vazquez said. “You have to know where it comes from and how to use it in a way that actually helps people make decisions.”

Ruizhi “Ben” Yu, information systems assistant professor-in-residence, said that is one of the central lessons of the field.

“Technology is a tool to support people, not replace them,” Yu said. “It can provide the best possible data for decision making, but the final decision still belongs to humans because they can consider context and situations that technology cannot fully understand.”

When Technology Still Needs Judgment

Vazquez sees that classroom lesson reflected in one of the World Cup’s most debated technologies: video assistant referee, or VAR. Fans see close offside calls, long pauses before penalty decisions, and goal celebrations interrupted by video review. 

“As a student, it is crazy to think about the technology behind it,” he said. “There are cameras, systems, people reviewing the play, and decisions being made in seconds. One decision can change a whole match.”

As a player, though, he knows technology can change the feeling of the game. He grew up playing without VAR, when goals were celebrated instantly.

“It makes the game more fair, but sometimes it takes away a little of the feeling,” he said. “When you score, you want to celebrate. With VAR, sometimes you have to wait. It changes that moment.”

His coursework has also shaped how he thinks about the difference between calls that can be measured more precisely and those that still require interpretation.

“Offside is more objective,” Vazquez said. “If you are offside, you are offside. But a penalty is different. What looks like a penalty to one person might not look like a penalty to someone else. That is where technology helps, but people still have to make the final decision.”

That lesson in the intersection between having the right information and knowing how to use it is precisely what information systems professor Andrew Hardin hopes students like Vazquez take away from their coursework.

“Information systems provide information to human decision-makers, who are free to interpret it,” Hardin said. “Our job is to provide systems that offer the most accurate data possible. The more accurate the data is, the less room there is for human interpretation.”

Watching Spain Again

This summer, 16 years after celebrating his 8th birthday during Spain’s first World Cup victory, Vazquez watched Spain play Belgium in Los Angeles — his first time seeing the national team compete in a World Cup in person.

On Tuesday, Vazquez was in Spain watching his native country upset France to advance to this Sunday's final match. In August, he'll return to Las Vegas for the upcoming academic year and soccer season.

"This sport unites the world. It has opened my life to opportunities I don’t think I would have had otherwise,” he said. “I don’t think I would be at UNLV if it wasn’t for soccer."

Soccer first brought Vazquez to UNLV, but his time on campus has given him a new way to understand the sport that has shaped his life — not only as a player, but as someone who sees the systems, decisions, and data behind the game.