Is artificial intelligence the future of recruiting?
We can predict and simulate how well a player is likely
to link up with new teammates at a new team.
Or is the scout watching on from the sidelines impossible to replace?
We're going out to watch players visually rather than on paper.
I think it's a bit different to be honest.
The human eye or AI?
The office or the terraces?
How exactly do you find the next world-class player?
You know we see a lot of players that are good on the ball, maybe not so good off for the ball
and the understanding of the game so the mental side is big.
Decision-makingm that's what i look for.
That's John Willis, he works as a regional scout
for Manchester United and runs UK football scouting
an organization which tries to match unattached players with clubs.
This is one of the ways clubs around the world have traditionally found their talent.
Scouts like John watch local leagues, youth leagues, school games, trial days and lower
league matches. They're all searching for that elusive diamond in the rough.
The scout's eye test still matters but statistics have become increasingly essential to all top
clubs. While past numbers, running stats and expected goals give a picture of the player it's
not complete. That's where AI can help to pick a player. With transfer fees in the hundreds of
millions and wages through the roof big clubs around Europe have spoken with AI Abacus.
The scouting startup intends to revolutionise football transfers with artificial intelligence
that shows clubs how well a transfer will work out before they splash the cash.
AI can tell Manchester City whether they should sign Harry Kane,
Erling Haaland or Kylian Mbappe based on how well they will fit in both on and off the pitch.
AI will be more and more accepted, at the moment it's really split I would say
amongst clubs. It's definitely in the last even two or three years come on massive amounts and
Steve Mclaren was one of the first to use it.
The data Prozone provided helped United win their historic treble in 1999.
Before this the use of in-depth statistics was almost unheard of in football.
Soon after everyone wanted to crunch the numbers.
Anyway this is Prozone.
Arsenal, Manchester United, Liverpool, Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern Munich.
Europe's leading clubs need that extra edge and Prozone is their high-tech tool of choice.
Cameras positioned around the pitch feed straight into a computer
that tracks the movement of all 22 players and the ball. There's nowhere to hide.
It is a significant advantage because you have more informations.
So it's like all, then it depends what you do with it.
Things have moved on a bit since then, and there's more information available than ever.
But AI Abacus think they can move past the numbers to predict whether a transfer will
be a hit or a miss based partly on a new innovation called a "chemistry rating".
Our sort of USP is trying to help teams be able to simulate a transfer and see how a player is
likely to turn out at a new club, so we look at things like the languages they might speak,
if they've played together before, if there's certain style attributes that link well together.
On-pitch relationships like the one between Erling Haaland and Marco Reus
can be hugely valuable to clubs.
Players like Thomas Müller and Robert Lewandowski responding to each other
without obvious communication are more difficult to predict for opponents.
But will that change?
Will AI be able to see the future?
How does it work? Let's say Manchester City want to buy a striker.
First they need to narrow the field down from hundreds of thousands to something more manageable.
This is done by position, eligibility, age and ability, as judged by the AI model.
Now 19 potential targets remain.
Let's dig a little deeper. Those 19 players have been rated on all manner of metrics,
from progressive passing and creativity to their resistance to pressure and aerial ability.
But here's the bit that AI Abacus say sets them apart simulating a transfer.
First the players are plotted on a graph according to how they will fit in at City
both tactically and in their chemistry with existing players.
From that Pep Guardiola and his recruitment team might identify
three players: Harry Kane, Erling Haaland, and Kylian Mbappe.
Now, we have the stats but what about the chemistry?
The AI assigns a chemistry rating of 85 to Mbappe, 84 to Kane and just 75 to Haaland.
Why so low? One reason is that the Norwegian has
never previously played with any of City's current squad.
Though he's expected to link up well on the pitch with several City stars
it's more difficult to predict how fruitful those relationships will be.
Kane scores higher on this measure having played for England with the likes of Jack Grealish,
Raheem Sterling and Phil Foden,
and is at a similar age to the majority of the players already at the club.
But perhaps surprisingly Mbappe edges
ahead even though he doesn't speak English as well as the other two
The way he linked up with players like Bernardo Silva at
old club Monaco offers an insight onto how quickly he could integrate at City.
While his predicted relationships with seven of the team's key creators bodes well.
But would they be able to cope with Guardiola's demanding tactics?
The AI says Kane would struggle to adapt to City's attacking structures and high press.
Mbappe scores well in possession but is not attuned to City's methods in transition,
giving him only a moderate tactical fit.
This is where Haaland shines. His natural game matches City well,
almost across the board, in possession and out.
He should be able to hit the ground running.
The final factor to take into account is the financials,
where once again Haaland comes out on top and Kane loses significant ground.
Mostly because he's older than the other two, so has a lower resale value.
With all the angles covered who should City sign?
The answer is Erling Haaland.
Though his chemistry rating was lower than the other two his seamless tactical fit
and the financials edge him ahead of Mbappe while Kane is some way behind.
Well, why do we need humans then?
Because there's still plenty about players that you just can't see on a screen.
Mark Farrell scouts youth players for English
club Peterborough United after previously working at Arsenal.
Even for academy prospects he finds out as much as possible about a player before taking them on.
Scouting is not just going to watch a player for five
minutes and saying that they're going to be the next Ronaldo.
Sometimes the best players don't stand out. You have to look at their personality on the pitch.
You've got to understand why, if there's a player say, i don't know,
number seven that we've gone to watch, you know, why is he underperforming from our report?
Could be anything, you know, it could be something at home, you know, it's not not every week they're
going to perform just like how we go to work and not perform every day or every week,
so it is really taking time and looking at players week and week out.
So will we soon see the end of transfer flops?
All the data in the world didn't stop Real Madrid blowing 100 million on Eden Hazard,
Manchester United releasing the expense of alexis sanchez on a free
or PSG splashing out on and then loaning out Jesé Rodriguez.
There's little doubting the importance of statistics
but putting in the hours on the terraces should not be underestimated.
Leicester City's Premier League win in 2016 owed plenty to Riyad Mahrez, Jamie Vardy and
Ngolo Kante, who cost less than 11 million Euros combined or about a tenth of a Hazard.
Vardy and Mahrez were spotted by Leicester scout Steve Walsh who had actually been intending to
watch other players. Turning up in the right place at the right time made the difference.
Plenty still slipped through the net though,
Vardy for example was still playing non-league football in his early twenties.
You will be here next year?
Uh no, I'm signing for Ibiza town. I'm going to Ibiza on a holiday and i'm never coming back.
He's not the only one. Milan's Junior Messias didn't turn pro until he was 24,
delivering fridges and working on building sites to make ends meet.
Wolfsburg hero Graffiti went from selling bin bags in Brazil to the Bundesliga title,
and of course there's cult hero Luca Toni...
...who bounced around the lower divisions in Italy before getting his big break in his 20s.
With increased statistics and AI becoming available at lower levels the best players
should start to be picked up earlier, but there's a long way to go. For youngsters
who missed out on academies the best hope remains getting spotted by a scout.
My name is Jack Cutmore, I'm aspiring to be a professional football player,
I'm 19 years old, I'm following my dream basically. I've got support
of my family and friends so I decided to come all the way to the UK from Australia.
You see those stories and it always motivates you to push harder, like even though i'm 19 and
haven't come through that academy stages, you still always think i can make it
because you look at those kind of role models that have done it before and
they're at the top of their game.
You know, that's kind of the dream, no matter what happens you just got to keep pushing.
It seems there will always be players that won't have
been analyzed or whose qualities have been missed by the machines.
You get some that just have never been in the right place at the right time, if you
like, that have never been seen by scouts, and you've got others that
may have grew up in academy, got released for a variety of reasons.
Players develop at different times as well, you know, there's still plenty
of scouts out and they're about games, so I think you always will have that.
You know, I think the data will assist it.
I think there's a real nice sweet spot between AI helping humans make better decisions and
being able to sort of simulate and see where the decision may go.
I don't see it being some sentient being taking over all of football and there being AI managers,
but yeah, I definitely see there being a way that you can work together.
It speeds up their job by being able to bring the pool down to a smaller
set of players, that they can then have their own opinions about them players
and then get assurance around those opinions, based on what the AI is saying.
It's early days for AI and football and we're a long
way from sci-fi scenes of robots in the dugouts.
But high quality information leads to better scouting.
Without the right players and chemistry teams will go nowhere.
Just as they need to find the blend between attack and defense,
clubs must recruit smartly by balancing algorithms and data with human judgment and experience.
After all the next Erling Haaland or Kylian Mbappe will probably be found by a human,
but you can be sure he'll also have been measured, tracked and rated by a machine.