ABSTRACT
The feedback loops that surround the games themselves are vitally important to the ultimate performance delivered on match day by everyone involved at each level. Preparation for any game is informed by feeding back post-game tactical analysis and biometric and recovery data, a task almost created for artificial intelligence (AI) assistance. Probably the best place to locate the analysis loop that represents the talent management within a club is with the identification, recruitment, retention, development and ultimately the exit of players and staff. Given the increasing granularity of health and safety data, AI/machine learning can now be applied to tasks well beyond game day performance, for the benefit of players and, indeed, of coaches. Real-time monitoring of training workloads using wearable tech, for example, has been able to predict injuries to elite footballers within a week prior to matches by combining such data with accuracy close to 90%.
