Wired magazine published an article titled "World Cup Teams Are in a Race for AI Dominance," describing how nations are rushing to use AI to gain competitive advantages. The article notes that the 2026 World Cup has become the largest AI technology trial in football history.
FIFA, as the organizer of the 2026 World Cup, plans to collect up to 150 million data points per match, including embedding IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit) sensors inside the football to record its movement 500 times per second for detailed ball trajectory tracking.
Patrick Lucey, chief scientist at Stats Perform, a data and AI company behind the global football ecosystem, stated that football has more possible patterns than the number of atoms in the universe.
Data from Stats Perform is used across nearly every aspect of the sport—from scouting players and setting multi-million-pound transfer values to tactical planning, lineup selection, corner kick and free-kick designs. Players also use this data in contract negotiations, while broadcasters enhance viewer entertainment with it.
Lucey compared football data to autonomous vehicle analysis, noting its high granularity, multiple interacting players, and adversarial nature. Considering just one team, there are up to 10 factorial possible player arrangements; adding the opposing team multiplies possibilities enormously.
On the smaller team side, Curaçao, a Caribbean territory of the Netherlands with about 159,000 people, used its own data technology to track Curaçaoan players worldwide. They applied geographic data for scouting and testing, enabling them to qualify for the World Cup as the smallest nation in the tournament's history.
Alex Stewart, CEO of Analytics FC, a sports data consultancy, noted that only one player on the Curaçao squad was actually born on the island; the rest were born in the Netherlands.
Additionally, many football associations have started using AI to select head coaches suited to tactical strengths and to plan first-team player compositions aligned with group-stage opponents.
England’s national team uses AI to analyze penalty shootouts, recognizing their critical role in deciding advancement or elimination. The FA's head of analysis told the BBC that a task that once took five days to study opponents’ penalty takers can now be completed in just five hours.
Marcelo Bielsa, Uruguay’s national team head coach, revealed that during his time managing Leeds United in the Premier League, his staff spent about 300 hours analyzing opposing teams before matches.
Lucey said such work can now be automated using systems that display moving red and blue dots tracking the yellow ball on the field, allowing analysts to query the frequency of play patterns leading to shots or goals instantly.
Jan Wendt, co-founder and CEO of PLAIER, an AI platform working with clubs and national teams, compared the current situation to the early internet era, when British Airways and Amazon launched websites around the same time but had vastly different outcomes—British Airways became a booking platform, while Amazon revolutionized global commerce.
Wendt sees AI having a similar transformative impact on football. However, AI tools and skilled personnel to develop and maintain them are costly, and not all countries have sufficient resources. He suggests partnerships with expert external companies as a more effective option for smaller nations.
However, more data can also complicate analysts’ work because their main role is to filter massive data sets down to useful conclusions for coaches and players.
Stewart explained that no one wants a 47-page opponent analysis report. While having more data can make the analyst’s job easier in some ways, it also demands greater skill in summarizing large volumes concisely.
FIFA, aware of concerns about data gaps between wealthy and poorer nations potentially skewing fairness, developed its own AI tool called Football AI Pro. For the first time, all World Cup participants can use it free of charge. The interface resembles a chatbot where coaches can query information about upcoming opponents and simulate matches in 3D, analyzing everything from pass and run locations to attacking and defensive patterns, shots, and goals.
Johannes Holzmueller, FIFA’s director of innovation, said FIFA’s goal is to provide technology accessible to all teams without needing specialized experts, acknowledging that not every nation has adequate budgets.
He admitted that this tool represents only a minimum standard FIFA can offer and that a clear gap remains among teams in their use of technology and data—especially compared to England, which has its own software developers, data scientists, and analysts, alongside external AI tools.
Looking ahead, Lucey believes the next step is long-term forecasting, leading to scenario-based analyses advising which players to rest to maximize success chances. When asked if FIFA will require teams to use only FIFA-approved AI tools, Holzmueller said this remains an open question but acknowledged AI will undeniably play a major role in football’s future.
Source:Wired