Appliance of science ready to revolutionise beautiful game

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE COULD HELP CLUBS QUICKLY IDENTIFY AND RECRUIT MOST TALENTED PLAYERS

COMPUTER scientists at Loughborough University have developed novel artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms that are set to transform the way football clubs analyse team and individual players’ performances on the pitch.

Dr Baihua Li, the project lead, says the technology could lead to major changes in the sport as it will enable clubs to effectively identify and quickly recruit talented players.

Current player performance analysis is a labour-intensive process and involves someone watching video recordings of matches and manually logging an individual player’s actions.

This involves recording how many passes and shots were taken by a player, where the action took place, and whether it had a successful result.

Not only is this method incredibly time-consuming, it also presents issues of accuracy, consistency, and comparability as it relies on human judgment and a lack of bias.

Some automated technologies are on the market already, but they are only able to track players on the pitch – to determine distance covered and speed – and cannot provide detailed information on the actions taken by players.

Funded by Innovate UK and in collaboration Statmetrix, a company that specialises in football performance data insights, the researchers have used the latest advances in computer vision, deep learning, and AI to achieve three main outcomes. They are:

1. Detecting body pose and limbs to identify actions

The technology processes video footage, detects individual players, and identifies if they are running, walking or jumping, and which foot they are passing the ball with.

The researchers used deep learning (a novel state-of-the-art technology of machine learning) and computer vision to train the AI system to do this.

Researchers used thousands of match recordings from all different football divisions – showing various teams, poses, jerseys, camera angles and backgrounds – to train the AI to detect players and poses and thus recognise their movements, namely running, walking, kicking with their left foot.

2. Tracking players to get individual performance data

In addition to looking at actions taken in a match, the Research Associate working on the project, Dr Shreedhar Rangappa, trained the deep neural network to track individual players and gather data on the individual’s performance throughout the match video.

Player tracking will help to work out how a player’s position is relevant to others – information that is incredibly important when it comes to analysing team sports coordination. 3. Camera stitching

Limited camera coverage (field of view) and low resolution have also been an issue when it comes to analysing lower league or grassroots games, as often only low-cost affordable cameras are used to record a match.

This is problematic as it is hard to record the whole field of view and the players run in and out of the image view, so it is hard to track them.

The researchers have come up with a solution by using two lowcost cameras (such as GoPros with each recording half of the football field) and a practical camera stitch method they have developed.

The technology uses corresponding feature points from both cameras to generate a whole field of view – allowing players to be tracked and analysed much more reliably. The technology is now at commercial trials and it is hoped a new product can be on the market and available for football clubs by the end of the year.

Dr Li says the innovations will help to improve access, at all tiers of football, to data needed for player performance analysis and talent identification, and there is the potential to use the technology to track players in other sports.

She said: “Performance data and match analysis in football is an essential part of the sport and can have a huge impact on the player and team performance.

“The developed technology will allow a much greater objective interpretation of the game as it highlights the skills of players and team cooperation.

“This innovation will have a positive impact on the football industry and further advance sports technology while providing value to the players, coaches, and recruiters that use the data.”

Olukunle Kayode, CEO at Statmetrix, said: “The solutions we aim to commercialise are technically challenging ones, but the benefits of data availability across the lower tiers of sport will help unlock previously untapped talent.”