The future of football between human passion and digital algorithms

We also see this in Italy with the rich American entrepreneurs who have become owners of almost half of Serie A (Inter, Milan, Roma, Atalanta, Venezia, Fiorentina, Genoa, Verona, Parma ).

The arrival of these entrepreneurs, accustomed to dealing with baseball, the most symbolic sport in the United States, has radically changed the approach to football: for them, the statistical culture, based on algorithms, is fundamental to make a team perform at its best. Once it was a matter of relying on talent scouts and coaches' wishes, now sports directors and players are identified ten thousand kilometres away with elaborate statistical calculations that are still revisable for the moment, as shown, for example, by the departure of Paolo Maldini from AC Milan, more inclined to traditional methods than those of Gerry Cardinale and the RedBird Capital Partners Fund, the New York-based investment company that owns the Rockeroon company.

'Artificial intelligence,' explains Carlo Ancelotti in the introduction of his colleague Stefano Boldrini's interesting book, 'cannot be considered the only tool available to a coach. Because it is not yet able, and we do not know if it ever will be able, to certify the emotional aspect, particularly that of the coach. An essential part of our job consists in fact in our emotional reactions in front of stress, the dynamics of a match, the feelings we experience during those 90 minutes....'.

Intuition and experience are, according to the current Brazil coach, a human capital that cannot be reduced to zero or scaled down by artificial intelligence. Fine words, but still the words of a great technician, born and bred in so-called empirical football, who nevertheless, with healthy pragmatism, comes to terms with a world in constant evolution.

Today, 162 years later, in a globally digital world, football is the most popular sport on the planet, with 211 federations affiliated to FIFA and a business that continues to grow: in 2022 FIFA recorded revenues of almost 6 billion dollars. In 2026, the World Cup will launch the formula with 48 national teams and in 2030 we will probably have 64 teams.

It is played more and more, it is consumed more and more. It is played, for business, even in countries, the Arab ones, where temperatures are almost impossible. A multinational industry that impacts heavily on the environment. In this sense, Boldrini predicts, the artificial intelligence-environmental sustainability connection will mark, for better or worse, the coming decades.

Another stimulating topic, especially for football fans, is how much data analysis contributes to improving the work of coaches by providing tools they never had before. It starts with Liverpool, where AI has taken its first steps, and moves on to Pep Guardiola's Manchester city, where as many as four astrophysicists have been enlisted in the data analysis department. Technologies and statistics would not only help to zero mistakes, as seen with the introduction of the semi-automatic offside, but also to work out the best tactics to win matches.

Is it better to go for a goal with a dense network of passes or a quick vertical turnaround? What about training? How do we do it to prevent accidents, which are becoming more and more numerous?

Some coaches, especially the younger ones, want to receive information in order to discover the weaknesses of their opponents and correct some of their players' incorrect behaviour. A game within a game, that of data analysis and new technologies applied to football, which interests everyone: coaches, referees, managers, journalists, fans. The latter, however, are not convinced - as happens with Var - that there are still gross inaccuracies that for months provoke heated controversy and discussion.

The chapter dedicated to referees (will we still need them?), on the possible decline of their princely role, is amusing. At the moment, Boldrini emphasises, technology illustrates, man evaluates, and then decides. We are still there: even in football, in addition to artificial intelligence, normal intelligence would be very useful.

But as Descartes ironically wrote in his Discourse on the Method: 'Common sense is the best distributed thing in the world; for everyone is convinced that he is so well endowed with it, that even the most incontentatious of them are inclined to wish they had no more of it than they have'.

Stefano Boldrini

The football of the future. Artificial intelligence, algorithms and sustainability

Diarkos Publisher, 18 euros