Skip to main content

Liverpool use AI to analyse corners

Google DeepMind has developed a prototype artificial intelligence football tactician in collaboration with Premier League club Liverpool, in the latest push to use the technology to master the ebb and flow of big-money sports. The computerised coach’s suggested improvements to players’ positions at corner kicks — a large potential source of goals — mostly won approval from human experts,

“What’s exciting about it from an AI perspective is that football is a very dynamic game with lots of unobserved factors that influence outcomes,” Petar Veličković, a DeepMind researcher and co-author of the Nature paper, told the Financial Times.  “It’s a really challenging problem.”

The DeepMind project is the product of three years of work with Liverpool on deploying AI, including in areas such as penalty kicks and predicting movements of players.

DeepMind’s latest model uses geometric deep learning on a data set comprising 7,176 corner kicks from the English Premier League between 2020 and 2023. Corner kicks represent a significant opportunity for attacking teams: along with other so-called set pieces, such as free kicks, they account for about 30 per cent of all goals.

TacticAI analysed outcomes from corner kicks with various configurations of players, using criteria such as who received the ball and whether they were able to shoot. It then suggested positional improvements and assessed their plausibility and usefulness in a blind case study by five experts at Liverpool: three data scientists, one video analyst and one coaching assistant.

The experts could not distinguish the AI-generated scenarios from actual match situations, the researchers said, favouring the TacticAI advice 90 per cent of the time over existing strategies. This showed the tool “readily provides useful, realistic and accurate” suggestions, the Nature paper said.

Liverpool did not respond to a request for comment from the Pink ‘Un on whether it had implemented any of TacticAI’s suggested changes, as manager Jürgen Klopp strives to end his tenure on a high note with trophies this May.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Fulham requires big funding from owner

After lengthy delays, Fulham’s shiny, new Riverside Stand has finally opened, creating “a unique Thameside destination with first class facilities for supporters and partners on match days, as well as for the wider community year-round”. This ambitious project has increased Craven Cottage’s capacity by around 4,000 to 29,600, while it has also taken advantage of the club’s fantastic location and wealthy catchment area by including two Michelin star restaurants, a rooftop swimming pool, corporate hospitality and event space, all benefiting from views of the Thames. Chief executive Alistair Mackintosh observed, “Fulham is the sort of club that can have a business class or first class and have fans that turn left on a plane.” Indeed, there is also an exclusive members club – with a football season ticket as an optional extra. It’s fair to say that “the times they are a-changing”, as this is a long way from the traditional pie and a pint. However, in a world where clubs face the tw...

Threat of financial calamity removed from Baggies

West Bromwich Albion had effectively been in decline ever since the club was sold to a Chinese consortium in August 2016, paying a figure north of £200m to buy former owner Jeremy Peace’s stake. Controlling shareholder Guochuan Lai’s ownership was fairly disastrous for the club, but his unloved tenure finally came to an end after Bilkul Football WBA, a company ultimately owned by Florida-based entrepreneur Shilen Patel and his father Dr Kiran Patel, acquired an 87.8% shareholding in West Bromwich Albion Group Limited, the parent company of West Bromwich Albion Football Club. This change in ownership was urgently required, due to the numerous financial problems facing West Brom, including growing high-interest debt and serious cash flow concerns, following years of no investment from the former owner. Indeed, West Brom’s auditors had already rung the alarm bell in the 2021/22 accounts when they cast doubt on the club’s ability to continue as a going concern without making player s...

A poor financial record, but new hope at Everton

I recently saw an amusing video online in which a group of Everton fans were rebuked in jest for being hopeful.  Football fans in general tend to swing between excessive optimism and excessive pessimism, but for many it seems that moaning is in their bloodstream (Spurs fans probably take the trophy).  However, Everton fans have had plenty to moan about on and off the pitch.   Let’s hope that a new era is about to begin for this grand old club. Everton’s 2023/24 financial results covered a fairly momentous season, when they ended up 15th in the Premier League, though they would finished three places higher if they had not received an 8-point deduction for breaching the Premier League’s Profitability and Sustainability Regulations (PSR). It was a worrying time for Everton fans, as the club faced a “perfect storm” of issues, including large financial losses, an ever increasing debt burden, a challenging stadium build and the tortuous sale of the club. There were eve...