Google Brings Artificial Intelligence To Football: First Tests With Liverpool

Artificial Intelligence Is Now Everywhere, Even In The Game Of Football: This Is How DeepMind (Google) And Liverpool Are Collaborating To Create The Virtual Assistant Of The Manager.

Technology bursts into the world of football. Whether it will help to evolve it positively or negatively is still too early to say, but the VAR first, the algorithms, and the artificial intelligence then ended up in the space of a few years among the commonly used words associated with the world of football.

And the next step is already ready, even if weighing the companies involved we could also speak of two steps in one. Liverpool, then the defending team in the Premier League 2019/2020, and DeepMind joined efforts to explore the benefits it can give the artificial intelligence applied to football. 

Never having heard DeepMind before is understandable, but it is enough to know that it is a subsidiary of Alphabet – that is the holding company to which Google belongs – to be almost certain to hear this name again in the future. 

Curious why Liverpool was chosen: the founder of DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, who participated in the project is a huge fan of the Reds, so it is the first club to be asked to collaborate.

The Behind-The-Scenes Analysis That Would Change Football

Thus Liverpool provided all the information collected in each of the matches played in the Premier League between 2017 and 2019. An incredible amount of data if we consider that in today’s football several tools are used to monitor as many aspects as possible, including GPS locators and sensors of various types, some of which are inserted inside the balloon.

Artificial intelligence applied to football does not expect the same results obtained in 2016 when DeepMind’s AlphaGo software defeated one of the strongest players in the world in the game of go, if only because the game of football contains inherent uncertainty. 

No desire to replace coaches even in the long term, only to develop systems that examine the greatest number of variables – and in football, we know, there are many – and assist the role of men, who seem irreplaceable. At least at the moment.

Artificial intelligence (AI) could for example be used to predict the consequences of a tactical variation or how the opponent’s game may vary with the lack of a key man. Or provide more precise information on penalty kicks: DeepMind researchers analyzed over 12,000 penalty shots awarded across Europe in recent seasons, discovering habits related to the role on the pitch – for example, attackers shoot more often in the low corner. to the left of the midfielders – or to the strong foot.

Furthermore, and perhaps the most interesting aspect for coaches and team managers, an artificial intelligence-based model that analyzes certain parameters on players in terms of strength and form could give better indications than those inferable from a human being, and thus advising team managers a rest period for certain players in order to reduce the risk of injuries.

Developments In The Medium-Term, Approximately Five Years

We should not expect revolutions in the short term, warns the manager of DeepMind who is closely following the project. “I doubt that the fruits of what we are doing will come in six months or a year, but in about five years some of the tools we are developing will have reached a good level of maturity and may be ready to advise coaches on key mistakes made during a race or on variations that could improve the game “.

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