TacticAI, AI tactical assistant helps train Liverpool players

TacticAI, the team's tactical assistant, uses Liverpool's 7,176 corners to coach players and provide real-time tactical advice during the match.

TacticAI is the result of a 3-year collaboration between Liverpool FC and Google DeepMind Lab. TacticAI's tactics are liked by more than 90% of football experts, much higher than the tactics proposed by humans, which are only rated by about 10% as good.

Google Deepmind said that to solve important problems including what happens when setting up corner kick tactics, whether similar tactics have worked well in the past, and how they can be adjusted to achieve a specific result, they used "geometric deep learning".

According to researchers, due to the randomness in each player's playing style and the constant fluctuations on the field, predicting the results of corner kicks is very complicated.

Based on data from Liverpool's previous 7,176 corners, TacticAI directly models the implicit relationships between players, representing penalty setups as a graph to successfully predict free-kick situations.

The AI ​​then exploits the approximate symmetry of the pitch, generating all four possible scenarios, from which it makes further predictions about penalty kicks.

The researchers believe that, beyond corner kicks, TacticAI can be used to analyze many other tactics as well as apply to other sports and industries.

Petar Velickovic, an engineer at Google DeepMind and one of the authors of the study, believes that models like TacticAI will become part of modern football and give top teams a significant advantage.

According to Google DeepMind, TacticAI is a complete system that can provide coaches with deep, comprehensive, and accurate tactical insights in real time on the pitch.