The United States Soccer Federation is hoping to recruit players from around the world by using AI to scan video footage of millions of young athletes, which will include some college athletic programs Who are incorporating AI in their recruitment process.
on a Luck Events in Scottsdale, Arizona this weekUS Soccer Federation COO Dan Helfrich – formerly CEO of consulting giant Deloitte – declared AI-assisted scouting represents a “paradigm shift” that would allow American soccer to “scout every single soccer match that an American-eligible player is playing anywhere in the world.”
As Helfrich points out, AI could effectively allow scouts to be in more places at the same time. Since scouts for the U.S. national team cannot literally be everywhere, a system has emerged in which some clubs, schools, and regions are prioritized over others, which can result in talented athletes being overlooked.
“How do you get your scouts – your humans – to all those places?” Helfrich said. “You can’t. And so automatically, you’re excluding 99.5 percent of people.” But Helfrich argues that AI combined with the widespread availability of video footage allows scouts to analyze the games of millions of athletes.
“Video for youth sports and AI is becoming more widely available — suddenly, we’re reimagining,” Helfrich said. Luck.
It’s an interesting prospect, especially for a global sport like football. And if an AI tool helps a talented athlete get noticed by US Soccer when they otherwise wouldn’t, that’s undeniably a good thing. On the other hand, building a strong talent pipeline that gets potential stars into national team programs is a challenge that goes far beyond scanning videos from across the web. It is questionable whether the program US Soccer is using will bring about a “paradigm shift” or whether it is just another tool in the kit.
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The AI program that US Soccer is reportedly using has been trained to be able to identify certain characteristics about a player’s game – skill level, technique, moves – that the organization believes would be suitable for a specific situation.
Following Helfrich’s comments LuckUS Soccer Federation CEO JT Batson Confirmed on talkSPORT podcast The national team program is actually using a “pilot” that leverages AI “for the purposes of player identification.”
“This is something we’re in the early stages of,” Batson said. “But we’re excited to learn from it and figure out, you know, how we can grow it so that more kids can actually be a part of American soccer, and we’re supporting them in their soccer journey – whether they want to play soccer for fun their whole life or whether they’re on the path to hopefully helping us win the World Cup.”
“We need to be able to find more players in this country,” he said. “And we need to make sure more players become part of our path than we have today.”
It is certainly true that talented young athletes in all sports have a difficult time getting noticed, whether by college, professional or national team coaches and scouts (or all of the above). And while the square of the earth versus how much time and money sports organizations can budget for recruiting plays a role in which players get national team approval, pipeline issues also have a lot to do with it. Basic access issues. Are quality facilities and quality coaching available to young players? Will their families have to break the bank or drive hours away from home, if that’s even an option for them?
AI can help national team scouts cover more digital territory in their search for new players. But discovery is only part of the equation, and an algorithm that spots new talent doesn’t necessarily put promising young players on the field in the first place.
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