Back of the net? Google's DeepMind is coming for football tactics

A team at Google's DeepMind claim to have demonstrated the efficacy of an AI model in predicting outcomes in soccer football game set pieces, as well as generating on-field tactics. Football - referred to as soccer stateside - is the most popular sport on the planet by a long way. It has been estimated that around 1.5 billion …

[trevorde]

Based on Premier League training data

New strategy is for attacker to dive in penalty area and roll around clutching leg

[Nuff Said]

Re: Based on Premier League training data

Then jump up and run away like nothing had happened once the ref has awarded the free kick.

[I ain't Spartacus]

Is this going to be like the laughably crap Amazon AI introduced in Formula 1 a few years ago?

And is their metric really "a survey of experts"? Let me guess: rather than actually testing whether it works, what they've done is slapped an LLM on a bunch of football wirting from pundits - got it to spit out results based on what they write is the best idea - then asked them if what it outputs is the best idea?

On the other hand, they may have a point with corner kicks. There's an obsession in the game with fancy short corners and clever tactics that rarely work. Rather than banging it in the box at head height - everybody jumps in the air while pulling each others' shirts and random chance means you score a decent number of times - even if it is accidentally, off the strikers arse. Any goal's a goal.

[universemolding.com]

In fact, it's impossible to do

[Emir Al Weeq]

To what purpose?

Even if the AI can accurately predict the outcome of a corner (or any other situation) how can this be communicated to the players in any way that can make a difference? Even if it can (and the rules accommodate this) their opponents' AI will do the same, meaning everyone just receives a never-ending stream of almost-instantly out-of-date instructions.

Or we let the players play the game as best they can and invent a word to describe this; how about "sport".