Chelsea and Burnley are just two clubs from across the world using AI to find future Premier League talents - and FourFourTwo were invited along to Chelsea’s Cobham training ground to speak to ai.io’s Richard Felton-Thomas about how they are working with the club and to test out whether or not we have what it takes to compete with top-tier footballers.
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00:00Richard, can you explain to me like I'm five years old what we do here in the IO labs?
00:26Yes so we we've completely changed the process where players now can put their
00:31opportunities to trial for football clubs into their own hands so just by
00:35downloading a mobile phone they can enter trials for professional football
00:38clubs for scholarships for branded opportunities and through our
00:42technology it tracks all their movements and gives them scores in
00:45relation to what professional football players have and that's all based on
00:49like their gender and their age and their age group so so scouts can use that to to
00:53go and scout them based on on how good their data is then once they come to
00:57the club this wonderful lab we're sitting inside now and they'll be trialed and
01:02tested inside this lab as well so inside this lab we've got gold standard sports
01:06science equipment that all the pros use and they'll come inside and they'll be
01:09tested and benchmarked against those pros as well. Can you tell me a little bit
01:12about who's currently using it? I can yes so in in the UK we have Burnley and
01:16Chelsea Football Club using it from from the Premier League teams and we have a
01:20host of teams across kind of League two and non-league and semi-pro that we're
01:23doing R&D testing with to see how it filters down the pyramid and gives
01:26players lots of opportunities across that broader than that MLS we have a deal
01:32with the MLS that that covers every team from their MLS next to their pro to
01:36their franchise teams as well and then we're just starting to roll out
01:39multi-language as well where you'll see some more things coming across
01:42different leagues all around the world. In relation to sort of Chelsea, Burnley and the
01:46MLS sides what will they be getting out of this that they weren't previously
01:49getting? A lot of it's to do with efficiency and and finding players in
01:53blind spots where where they're not currently looking there's there's what
01:56265 million players worldwide that want to play football to some level you
02:02haven't got that many scouts so what scouts tend to do is they'll go to the
02:05places where they found that talent before and probably every kid in the UK at
02:09some point or globally said how do I get a scout to watch me they just don't have
02:13the time to see everyone they don't have time to watch people's highlight reels
02:16they're looking for ways where they can get some data up front to say this is
02:20worth my time so that's what we provide to them through the through the mobile
02:23phone means a scout now can really target their time go to the right place at the
02:27right time the sustainability story there's an efficiency story just means
02:30they find the talent faster and sign them faster. Have they found any talent so
02:34far could you tell us any about any success stories you've had? Yeah we've had
02:37over over a hundred players now have I've been signed trialed or played for
02:41whether it's clubs or even national teams and we had some national team cases
02:44with Sri Lanka Republic of Ireland where talent's been found but yeah Chelsea
02:48signed players Burnley signed players and this goes right from under nines
02:52through to the oldest has been a 19 year old so it really covers the full
02:56spectrum of the the ages of of grassroots and amateur football. What do you
03:01sort of want to do with this next because obviously this is one amazing space age
03:05lorry is there plans to sort of roll this out for more clubs to make it more
03:07accessible or is the idea that it's sort of quite a sought after thing? Yeah the
03:12the mobile side would just be an all access lots of opportunity players to
03:16come in and try to get that opportunity in that trial with the labs this this
03:21packs up I was talking about being like a big transformer it rolls up together and
03:25it drives off and it goes goes to the next team so anyone we work with will have
03:29opportunities to use the lab for their for their signed players and teams beyond
03:33that as well using this in event spaces and fan engagement and taking it to
03:37grassroots tournaments and you know that's all part of the plans as well so
03:39people can expect us to see us around with with these labs. What does it
03:44currently not do that you'd like it to do or they might be able to do in the
03:47future? Yeah the it's a great question the the the big thing for us at the
03:51moment there you go the big thing for us at moment is is cognitive testing it's you
03:56know it's one big pillar of the sport that actually people are really clubs are
03:59really starting to engage with and starting to understand more and more and it's it's there's a lot that's
04:03still needs to be understood from that what we can do with a lab is we can do
04:06some cognitive testing with the teams and see what makes sense so we can start
04:09to bring that to the mobile phone for for the rest of the world to be able to
04:12access as well so so cognitive is a big becoming pillar for us. A final question
04:16most important one how did 442's Ryan Darbs do in these trials? I'm gonna have to
04:22say he did well yeah I know it pains me but actually did very well so we we went
04:28through the data there was a couple of bits there around his explosivity and his
04:31reactive strength that that he would want to work on from here but actually the cognitive
04:36metrics and most of the power metrics and speed metrics there they were very good
04:40well well done Ryan well done
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