16 Sep 2026 06:53:25
Quick question for Ed001. As it's in the news a lot recently I was just wondering what you know about the impact of Artificial Intelligence on the game.
I know there have been data analysts around the game for years and that loads of player metrics are measured, but was just wondering whether teams were using models which, based on patterns of play, could make real time adjustments to tactics and personnel? Could the age of the 'tactical genius' manager be over and they be replaced by analysts and data scientists in the dug out, who respond to data being relayed to them as the game is in progress?
{Ed001's Note - that sounds like my worst nightmare but also probably very likely. The players are already robotic enough, I wouldn't be surprised if they even shift over to using robots so they don't have to pay wages as well. I don't actually know for sure about AI, it is something I personally hope is banned, as it is not intelligence anyway. It is just scraping other people's work and copying it. I am sure there is a usage of it to sift through stats etc, but I hope it never reaches the level you are talking about!}
16 Sep 2026 08:29:52
Thanks. Appreciate your response. Suppose, at this stage, the models are only as good as what someone tells them to do.
16 Sep 2026 09:50:59
this future is genuinely not far from now. it could be 2-3 years away. there are already features in smaller games (i mean playing area sizes, given the capabilities to cover an entire football field + its complexities) such as pickleball.
recordings of a game can be read and itll disect game by game moments by the player chosen (likely atm still works because the AI can identify the players, unless twins wearing similar outfits) and u can get clips of your own plays to analyse.
i know this sounds incredibly basic but this is accessible to the public, like u and me. with tech the improvements made are vastly incremental, consider how long ago was the will smith spaghetti video and now AIs are making video clips of kanye singing in chinese.
im not for or against but some form of it is inevitable.
16 Sep 2026 10:07:58
To a degree isn't Brentford already like this in some way? Or the RB teams? Everything is in place and changing the manager doesn't make too much difference unless they are truly hopeless.
16 Sep 2026 10:19:40
Replace the refs first. This would actually be good for the game.
Machine learning based models for systems, tactics, player action are already being used by analytics departments. Currently this information is supplementary to coaches and recruitment to inform decisions. Is it possible to make those model more prominent in the decision making? That will depend on the coach and sporting directors being willing to defer to agents on decisions. I could see some startup club owned by a crypto degenerate trying it out just for publicity and curiousity but would be quite surprised to see it become mainstream.
More likely might come augmented reality viewing experiences - make your home feel more like you're in the stadium with your mates.
Whether the game will make the leap to players having information/data being fed to them via technologies, it's difficult to tell. Surely players would push back on that on account of them not wanting to be seen as robots on the pitch.
And you wonder in the growing world of live streamers, some players might be under pressure to reveal a bit more of their lives and personalities online in this attention economy, whether for individual or club marketing income.
Weird times indeed.
16 Sep 2026 17:22:13
Teams are already using AI, but it will never replace coaching, AI isn't actually intelligent, it's not capable of coming up with new ideas, it can take what it's been taught in spit out variations but it's never going to have the awareness required to spot the infinite subtleties a human is capable of picking up on.
It shouldn't even be called AI because it's really just machine learning with a chat function. When it comes to something like football, it's really not that useful except for gathering and sharing data, the unpredictability is such a massive factor that just cannot be computed.
Not to mention the human factor, it doesn't pick up on the subtle tells of body language, mental state, emotion and so on, it has no instincts whatsoever. A football coach can see 10 different things at once and immediately KNOW what's wrong, whereas AI can only run the numbers and use probability to speculate an answer. Sure Paddy Power already does that.