Introduction.
Just imagine if we had technologies like now 40 years ago. When Diego Maradona scored his remarkable goal against England in the final match of the World Cup. Nobody would know about “The hand of God” in this case. Nowadays, technology plays a huge role in football. Also, with the development of AI, many processes and aspects of the game have changed. Let’s find out how technologies influence our favourite game.
Easier data gathering process = better results.
Every professional football club uses huge amounts of data during the preparation for the match. And obviously, AI integration in applications for football data gathering made a game change move in the industry. Before that, people were typing data by hand. For example, a team could gather data during the filming of the training session or match. Dozens of cameras film every move of the player during the match. In this way, AI gathers data about touches of the ball, distance of dribble, amount of successful and unsuccessful tackles and more. All this data helps coaches to improve game plans and to show mistakes to the players.
AI helps to control the game.
Referees all around the world started to use the VAR system to review controversial moments of the game. But technologies never stop their development. In the 2022 World Cup in Qatar for the first time, we saw an automatic offside system which shows the referee when players get to an offside position. So, in simple words, cameras in the stadium film the game and AI determines offside position during the team attack. The system sent a notification to the referee to watch that the player was offside. In my opinion, the referee’s job is going to be substituted by technology in the near future. We don’t need a referee any more to determine offside, so why do not we program robots to determine fouls or to give a yellow or red card?
How players fitness could be improved with AI?
STATSport is a company which uses AI to help players maximise their performance while avoiding injuries. STATSport sells vests for athletes and sports clubs which gather data about their movements, heart rate and other metrics during training/matches. This data is then used to generate personalized training plans for each player and to identify potential injury risks. I could see that soon, fitness coaches will have AI assistants which will provide unique training programs for athletes.
Fan engagement on La Liga example.
Football impossible to imagine without fans. Everyone remember COVID-19 and empty stadiums. With development of technologies competition hosts or TV broadcasters could provide their fans with unique statistic and information. Which will make fans engagement even more during the football match.
An example of Spanish La Liga should show how fans could be more engaged in the game. What the Spanish league did: They started to gather data from 16 cameras which film the game and showed it to the fans. With all this data, fans can know statistics about the shots, passes, speed of the shot, speed of the player or the distance to which they passed. The key factor for fans to fully understand all data is that La Liga shows it in a simple way. Bright and understandable graphics which help fans to be engaged in the game more than usual.
Conclusion.
AI and technologies will become more important in football. We are going to have AI implementation in more and more sectors of football. Not only top teams and league are going to use AI in their preparations for the matches. But, also fans will use technologies to understand games better.
- https://analyisport.com/insights/how-is-artificial-intelligence-being-used-in-football/
- https://fcbusiness.co.uk/news/how-is-ai-changing-football-as-we-know-it/
- https://medium.com/mlearning-ai/is-ai-changing-football-123386582c9b
- https://www.cio.com/article/646627/laliga-transforms-fan-experience-with-ai.html
- https://m.allfootballapp.com/news/Headline/FIFA-approves-revolutionary-AI-tracker-for-use-in-football-boots-to-gather-data/3181492
Made with Google Bard. Prompts that I used “AI boom in football: How artificial intelligence is transforming the beautiful game”.
Picture generated by deepai.org