As well as the coaches and physios who sit alongside head coach Thomas Tuchel on the bench, England’s staff includes groups of analysts, data scientists and in-house software development teams.
They use different AI tools – some purchased from external tech firms, some built inside the FA – to analyse data, find interesting information, and create presentations which are used in meetings to make complex information understandable for coaches and players.
The idea is that England’s players are then able to make better decisions on the pitch, including their approach to penalties.
“AI can show certain tendencies for where opposition players put their penalties that we probably weren’t thinking of,” explains Rhys Long, who since 2016 has been the FA’s head of performance insights and analysis.
“When we get to a World Cup, we have 47 teams’ worth of information to profile – where has every player in every squad put every penalty since they were 16?
“It used to take us five days to collect one team’s worth of penalty-taking information. Using AI, that can now be brought down to about five hours. Then that becomes a five-minute conversation with our goalkeeper, for five seconds of them hopefully saving a penalty.”
In theory, then, the penalty information stuck on goalkeeper Jordan Pickford’s water bottle is more accurate and detailed then ever before.
And the results so far are strong.
Since Long arrived, England’s penalty record has improved significantly, and analysts’ use of AI is also used to reduce the mental pressure for England players choosing where to place penalties.
