One of the major debates arising from the 2022 Qatar World Cup is not about who was the best player, which team was the most competitive, or which national team deserved more than they received. Rather, it is about the increasingly noticeable impact of digital transformation in the world of sports. While the semi-automatic VAR (Video Assistant Referee) drew much attention due to its direct impact on many of the results, artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics are also becoming established parameters for planning, training, and evaluating the performance of different teams in football.
In fact, among the innovations announced by FIFA, it was revealed that for the first time, athletes and their coaching staffs would have access to advanced statistics generated by FIFA’s official systems to assess their performance during matches. Each movement was closely monitored. FIFA set up a structure of 25 data analysts per match, capable of recording up to 15,000 data points during the 90 minutes of play (averaging over 100 per match, considering the unusually long added times). Each team could also have up to nine video analysts stationed at the top of the stadiums, with the possibility to send real-time content and even use GPS antennas beside the bench.
This is a democratizing step, allowing all teams to access a key element for competition that only a few had been using for some time. For example, it is known that the German team used video analysis in Russia 2018 to detect weaknesses in their opponents. Given that the powerful German team—four-time World Cup champion, four-time runner-up, and four-time third place—was eliminated in the group stage both in that tournament and in this one, it is clear that the main challenge is not just to accumulate data but to develop the ability to generate models that can interpret and gain insights from it. Technological advances in the Internet of Things (IoT) now allow both athletes and game elements (balls, goals, touchlines) to be equipped with sensors capturing all types of data: from the speed at which a forward runs to the force with which a defender strikes the ball, from the distance covered by the physically best-performing player to the incorrect passes made by a midfielder or the direction chosen by the star striker to take penalties.
The end of intuition? The list is endless and includes, in addition to specific aspects of player performance, weather conditions that could influence the game, behaviors and habits of opponents, field conditions, and even athletes’ health—crucial for injury prevention.
AI and analytical tools help convert all this into strategy: assembling teams with those who are in the best physical and mental condition or creating exclusive strategies for each match based on one’s own strengths and the opponents’ weaknesses. Not long ago, coaches would watch hundreds of videos of their team and their rivals and use their experience, knowledge, and personal insights—including a strong dose of intuition—to create that “whiteboard play” capable of leading the team to victory. Has the moment arrived when data, processed by the right AI algorithm and with the infallibility it provides, will play an essential role in scoring goals and preventing them?
