The U.S. Soccer Federation hopes to recruit players from around the world by using AI to scan video footage of tens of millions of young athletes and joining several college athletic programs that are implementing AI into their recruiting process.
in luck At an event in Scottsdale, Arizona, this week, U.S. Soccer Federation Chief Operating Officer Dan Helfrich (former CEO of consulting giant Deloitte) declared that AI-assisted scouting represents a “paradigm shift” that will allow U.S. Soccer to “scoot every soccer game played by U.S.-qualified players anywhere in the world.”
As Helfrich says, AI allows scouts to virtually be in more places at the same time. Because scouts for the U.S. national team aren’t literally everywhere, a system has emerged where certain clubs, schools, and regions are prioritized over others, which can result in talented players being overlooked.
“How do you get the scouts, the humans, to all those places?” Helfrich said. “You can’t do that, so you’re automatically excluding 99.5 percent of people.” But Helfrich argues that AI, combined with widespread use of video footage, will allow scouts to analyze the play of millions of athletes.
“Video is becoming more widely available in youth sports and AI, and all of a sudden we’re starting to be rethought,” Helfrich said. luck.
This is an interesting prospect, especially for a global sport like soccer. And if AI tools can help U.S. soccer get noticed by talented athletes who otherwise wouldn’t, that’s definitely a good thing. On the other hand, building a strong talent pipeline that attracts potential stars to national team programs is more than just scanning videos on the web. The question is whether the program U.S. Soccer is using will result in a “paradigm shift” or just a tool in its kit.
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The AI program used by U.S. Soccer was reportedly trained to identify specific attributes about a player’s game (skill level, technique, movement) that the organization believes would be appropriate for a particular position.
In response to Mr. Helfrich’s comments, luckU.S. Soccer Federation CEO JT Batson confirmed on the talkSPORT podcast that the national team’s program does indeed use AI-powered “pilots” “for player identification purposes.”
“This is still in the early stages,” Batson said. “But we’re excited to learn from it and understand how we can scale it so that more kids can be a true part of American soccer, and we’re supporting them on their soccer journey, whether they want to play soccer to enjoy the rest of their lives or win a World Cup.”
“We need to be able to scout more players in this country,” he added. “And we need to make sure that we have more players joining our pathway than there are currently.”
It’s true that talented young athletes in all sports have a hard time getting seen by college, professional, or national team coaches and scouts (or all of the above). And while the square miles of the Earth and how much time and money sports organizations can afford to spend on player recruitment influence whether a player makes the national team, the pipeline issue also has a lot to do with more fundamental access issues. Do young players have access to quality facilities and quality coaching, and do their families have to break the bank or drive hours from home if that is an option?
AI could help national team scouts cover more digital territory to acquire new players. But discovery is only part of the equation, and the algorithms that find fresh talent aren’t what get promising young players onto the field in the first place.
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