The process of scouting football players has already changed quite radically in recent years. Data analytics has become more and more important in this domain. The WyScout platform is an example of such a platform that utilizes data analytics in order to help scouts, managers, and journalists detect new and interesting players. Almost every big football club also already has a team of data analysts on board.
However, Wyscout and other comparable platforms are very sophisticated, they are purely focused on scouting professional players while players at lower levels are often ignored. Measurable data like for example goals scored, passing accuracy, interceptions made and chances created is taken into account. These types of data can only be obtained from players that play their games in front of video cameras. As a result, the use of data analytics mainly focuses on professional teams and players. Youth academy players and players in lower divisions are often ignored in this way of scouting.
AiScout addresses this issue. As the name already reveals, it is a scouting platform based on Artificial Intelligence. It has already been recognized by the FIFA and has won a World Football Summit award for innovation (Burnley Football Club, 2022). In the AiScout app any individual footballer can participate in so-called trials. These trials can be set up by professional football clubs, national teams, university teams or by the platform itself. In the trials participants must complete several football-related tasks like dribbling past cones or kicking the ball multiple times against a wall. Also purely physical tasks like doing pushups or a 10 meter sprint can be elements of a trial. All tasks can be executed at any location by any player in the world, as long as they have the AiScout app that will monitor the participant during the trial. Before a trial is released to the general public the club’s players first complete the trial. In this way the club has a benchmark so that the results of participants can be analyzed with help of the results of players that are already at the club. This makes the acquired scores way more meaningful for clubs (World Football Summit, 2022).
Several clubs have already set up trials, predominantly for scouting youth players. Burnley, at the moment of the trial a Premier League club, was one of the first to do so and the results were quite promising. During the Burnley trial around 12,000 players were analyzed. These players came from 125 different countries. 24 of all these analyzed players were assessed in real life by Burnley scouts. 4 of them were even directly invited for extended week-long trials at the clubs training ground (Burnely Football Club, 2021).
This shows that AiScout can offer a great podium to currently undiscovered, young football talents. It could be a very useful and efficient addition to clubs’ scouting system, since it can analyze a huge amount of players from anywhere around the world without the need to see the players face-to-face.
The video below illustrates how AiScout works.
References:
Burnely Football Club. (2021, May 17). Club Welcomes AiSCOUT Trialists. Burnley Football Club. Retrieved October 11, 2022, from https://www.burnleyfootballclub.com/content/aiscout
Burnley Football Club. (2022, July 25). CLUB ANNOUNCE AISCOUT AS OFFICIAL PARTNER. Retrieved October 11, 2022, fromhttps://www.burnleyfootballclub.com/content/club-announce-aiscout-as-official-partner
World Football Summit. (2022, April 21). Understanding AiSCOUT and how it’s revolutionising football scouting. Retrieved October 11, 2022, from https://worldfootballsummit.com/understanding-aiscout-and-how-its-revolutionising-football-scouting/
