Shakiez
Recently, data analytics in all industries has taken a top spot in the ranks, it has been transforming the football world with the help diff of AI models (Zone7 and Deepmind).
With AI, so many football clubs around the world are changing how they scout opponents, recruit new players, improve players performance, and detect foul play during matches.
With the rise in amount of data analysis in football from club level to officiating has created the perfect environment for machine learning.
AI can be trained to help spot patterns and detect errors in collected data that might otherwise be overlooked by humans. It also automate processes and aid in quick decision making with much accuracy.
Artificial Intelligence is already been used in football in several ways which you may not know yet but this article explains it all.
How AI can be used to Collect Football Player Data?
A vast amount of data is now collected in football especially on players performance in each match, with other hundreds of data points recorded on matchdays making this huge number of data to become complex for just humans to handle.
If you recall some years ago, football data was centered on matchday performances by players but a few as many were not taken into account. Players were rated but not with vivid statistics basically, the data taken into account were goals, passes, tackles or shots.
This data were collected and anaylized by experts by watching the live event or the footage after the event before some decision could be made.
Well, in football focusing only on the match data has left a lot of other details regarding the event and one could not tell precisely what the entire 22 players are doing as the football match is ongoing.
That is were the use of Artificial Intelligence AI come to play, digital camaras are now been installed all around the stadium to monitor movements and actions of every player on the pitch, and giving football data analysts a full insight of the event also generating accurate data on players actions.
How Artificial Intelligence track data in football?
These computers are trained for the purpose of detecting and tracking each player action during a match. Although, played sometime stand in the way of a recording camara’s angle but the truth is this AI oriented computers are advanced and accurate. It is a reliable gem that allows complex tracking of football data which records more details regarding players movement, positions, runs, touchs, tackles, etc, infact it is much more detail than any human analyst.
How Referees use AI to Make Better Decisions?
Referees are tasked with a demanding job from fittness, good reflexes, and accurate decision making. We have seen bad decision taken by match officials which sometimes even costs a team in a crucial match.
If there was Video Assistant Referee (VAR) during the 1986 FIFA world cup, Diego Maradona’s handball goal (hand of God) for Argentina against England would have been cancelled.
●VAR is one of the important AI models used by FIFA currently to improve accuracy in football decision making, this AI is to assist match officials to detect foul play and other related occurances in the game.
●Semi-Automated Offside Technology (SAOT) newly introduced officiating system, that is built with 12 cameras around it basically installed in the stadiums to track the position of the ball and player 50 times per second with the use of AI sensor placed inside the ball.
When SAOT detects an offside, it sends a signal to the VAR officials for confirmation and decisions. SAOT’s help match officials to detect offside and player positions before the ball was kicked, helping them to do a thorough check to avoid wrong decisions.
SAOT was first used during the 2022-23 Champions League group stage and at the 2022 World Cup with with great success recored. It has not altered but improved decision-making of referees, alerting officials on information that they can use to take the right action.
● Goal line technology, their have been many controversial goals in football history concerning the goal line in the past, touch line goals were just the referee’s decision just like any other but nowadays with use of AI help referees to detect a goal easily, once a ball passes the goal line it sends an instant signal to the referees who feels a vibration on his wrist watch allowing him to make the right call of action.
How Football Clubs Use AI to Keep Players Fit?
Due to regular matches in modern day football, especially especially players who play for in domestic, continental and international competitions, it very useful to have a knowledge on the fitness level of your team and manage any injury risks on time. So AI has made it quite easy to determine this issues without much stress.
For instance, Zone7 is an American data company that uses AI to help players increase their performance levels while avoiding injury. Noticeably, Los Angeles FC, have acertain that the AI model has help the football club to win the MLS champions in 2022 by keeping them in a maximum performing shape and reducing injuries per game played by 17%.
How Zone7 uses AI for player’s fitness?
Zone7 uses AI to analyse the data of players, point out patterns that show the possibility of when they might get injured, and the cause of these injuries “It retrospectively utilises the data given to it in the past season(s) example; GPS data, injury record etc” these were the areas revealed by Gavin Benjafield, LFC’s Performance Director.
Zone7’s is a model on the rise in usage by several other football clubs like Napoli and Leeds United well know to be employing at the moment to acertain players fitness.
Deepmind is a game changer for Liverpool during the spell of Jurgen Klopp since the club’s takeover by the Fenway Sports Group in 2010, the club has systematically used this Artificial Intelligence initiative for data analytics in football and obviously got huge sucess. Developers of this injury and fittness detecting technology was invented by scientists from Harvard and Cambridge University. With the help of this, Klopp had success during his spell at the club wining the Premier League, Champions League, FA Cup and other unofficial trophies.
This has increased the voltage of LFC in collaborating with DeepMind, an artificial intelligence company and research laboratory owned by Google to optimise their players output in general.
With this innovative idea Liverpool FC has grown in football players data analysis and currently have one of the biggest and most-developed analytics departments in football,” according to Ian Graham, the club’s Director of Research, Liverpool is enjoy DeepMind which was invented by Demis Hassabis, who is a fan of the club.
With DeepMind and Zone7 technology on players data football clubs now analyse opponents reactions before to matchs and make tactical changes and formations to counter such opponents maximising the team’s general performance.
Professor Karl Tuyls who’s an expert and a research team member of the football technology, said: “I don’t think you will see big impacts in the next six months or a year, but in the next five years some of the tools will be more developed, and you could see something like an ‘Automated Video Assistant Coach’ that can help with pre-match and post-match analysis, or can look at the first half of a game and give you advice on what could be changed in the second half.”
AI will take over most of the referees jobs in football so to say, as the innovations get even better in years to come.
