Football, also known as soccer, stands out as one of the most widely enjoyed sports globally. Beyond the physical skills displayed on the field, it’s the strategic nuances that bring depth and excitement to the game. As former German football striker Lukas Podolsky famously remarked, “Football is like chess, but without the dice.”
DeepMind, known for its expertise in strategic gaming with successes in Chess and Go, has partnered with Liverpool FC to introduce TacticAI. This AI system is designed to support football coaches and strategists in refining game strategies, focusing specifically on optimizing corner kicks – a crucial aspect of football gameplay.
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at TacticAI, exploring how this innovative technology is developed to enhance football coaching and strategy analysis. TacticAI utilizes geometric deep learning and graph neural networks (GNNs) as its foundational AI components. These components will be introduced before delving into the inner workings of TacticAI and its transformative impact on football strategy and beyond.
Geometric Deep Learning and Graph Neural Networks
Geometric Deep Learning (GDL) is a specialized branch of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) focused on learning from structured or unstructured geometric data, such as graphs and networks that have inherent spatial relationships.
Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) are neural networks designed to process graph-structured data. They excel at understanding relationships and dependencies between entities represented as nodes and edges in a graph.
GNNs leverage the graph structure to propagate information across nodes, capturing relational dependencies in the data. This approach transforms node features into compact representations, known as embeddings, which are utilized for tasks such as node classification, link prediction, and graph classification. For example, in sports analytics, GNNs take the graph representation of game states as input and learn player interactions, for outcome prediction, player valuation, identifying critical game moments, and decision analysis.
TacticAI Model
The TacticAI model is a deep learning system that processes player tracking data in trajectory frames to predicts three aspects of the corner kicks including receiver of the shot (who is most likely to receive the ball), determines shot likelihood (will the shot be taken), and suggests player positioning adjustments (how to position the players to increase/decrease shot probability).
Here’s how the TacticAI is developed:
- Data Collection: TacticAI uses a comprehensive dataset of over 9,000 corner kicks from Premier League seasons, curated from Liverpool FC’s archives. The data includes various sources, including spatio-temporal trajectory frames (tracking data), event stream data (annotating game events), player profiles (heights, weights), and miscellaneous game data (stadium info, pitch dimensions).
- Data Pre-processing: The data were aligned using game IDs and timestamps, filtering out invalid corner kicks and filling in missing data.
- Data Transformation and Pre-processing: The collected data is transformed into graph structures, with players as nodes and edges representing their movements and interactions. Nodes were encoded with features like player positions, velocities, heights, and weights. Edges were encoded with binary indicators of team membership (whether players are teammates or opponents).
- Data Modeling: GNNs process data to uncover complex player relationships and predict the outputs. By utilizing node classification, graph classification, and predictive modelling, GNNs are used for identifying receivers, predicting shot probabilities, and determining optimal player positions, respectively. These outputs provide coaches with actionable insights to enhance strategic decision-making during corner kicks.
- Generative Model Integration: TacticAI includes a generative tool that assists coaches in adjusting their game plans. It offers suggestions for slight modifications in player positioning and movements, aiming to either increase or decrease the chances of a shot being taken, depending on what’s needed for the team’s strategy.
Impact of TacticAI Beyond Football
The development of TacticAI, while primarily focused on football, has broader implications and potential impacts beyond the football. Some potential future impacts are as follows:
- Advancing AI in Sports: TacticAI could play a substantial role in advancing AI across different sports fields. It can analyze complex game events, better manage resources, and anticipate strategic moves offering a meaningful boost to sports analytics. This can lead to a significant improvement of coaching practices, the enhancement of performance evaluation, and the development of players in sports like basketball, cricket, rugby, and beyond.
- Defense and Military AI Enhancements: Utilizing the core concepts of TacticAI, AI technologies could lead to major improvements in defense and military strategy and threat analysis. Through the simulation of different battlefield conditions, providing resource optimization insights, and forecasting potential threats, AI systems inspired by TacticAI’s approach could offer crucial decision-making support, boost situational awareness, and increase the military’s operational effectiveness.
- Discoveries and Future Progress: TacticAI’s development emphasizes the importance of collaboration between human insights and AI analysis. This highlights potential opportunities for collaborative advancements across different fields. As we explore AI-supported decision-making, the insights gained from TacticAI’s development could serve as guidelines for future innovations. These innovations will combine advanced AI algorithms with specialized domain knowledge, helping address complex challenges and achieve strategic objectives across various sectors, expanding beyond sports and defense.
The Bottom Line
TacticAI represents a significant leap in merging AI with sports strategy, particularly in football, by refining the tactical aspects of corner kicks. Developed through a partnership between DeepMind and Liverpool FC, it exemplifies the fusion of human strategic insight with advanced AI technologies, including geometric deep learning and graph neural networks. Beyond football, TacticAI’s principles have the potential to transform other sports, as well as fields like defense and military operations, by enhancing decision-making, resource optimization, and strategic planning. This pioneering approach underlines the growing importance of AI in analytical and strategic domains, promising a future where AI’s role in decision support and strategic development spans across various sectors.
