Football and Artificial Intelligence: how Scout Advisor works, the new tool for identifying future stars

The void he left Ramón Rodríguez Verdejoknown in the world of football as ‘Monchi’when he left the position of sporting director of Seville of Spain It was hard to fill. The fact is that the manager transformed the Andalusian club into one of the best at attracting emerging talent, which were then fundamental in the sporting results that positioned him in Europe and in the world. Now, the institution of southern Spain innovates the player recruiting process and data analysis with artificial intelligencethrough the tool Scout counselor developed together with the IBM company. The target? Improve the effectiveness and results in player research, in less time and have a competitive advantage in the football sector.

Indeed, Scout Advisor is an artificially intelligent scout built on IBM’s Watsonx platform. The design is versatile and easy to customize, making it easier for managers of different scouting departments to be specific when searching for data.

The development of this tool allows us to bridge the gap between metrics-based scouting and human observations not visible on the playing field. This automated process provides player identification and decision making.

Paolo Horitaan IBM spokesperson said about the development process Clarion: “IBM’s team of engineers and developers were able to design this tool to augment and strengthen the capabilities of ‘headhunters’ who previously performed this process manually, which required a lot of time to prepare and interpret them”.

The system has the ability to process natural language information and other large models, which allows it to obtain results on unstructured qualitative data, such as the textual analysis of the observers to which Sevilla FC has access.

Furthermore, Scout Advisor understands scout jargon and typical football phrases such as a ‘mixed 10’ or an ‘attacking winger’ and the search can be filtered according to criteria such as: quality, age, injury history and other quantitative data.

José María del Nido Carrascopresident of Sevilla FC, underlined the importance of collaborative work for the development of the football industry: “We are very happy to work with IBM, as this project can be disruptive for Sevilla FC and the entire sports sector, our team of scouts and analysts is committed to finding the best players to support the success of our team and “They have worked tirelessly to build an impressive database of player reports and now, with IBM’s support, we can leverage this resource to its full potential.”.

In 2022, Sevilla FC developed Transfer tracking, a free tool that allows you to obtain financial compensation for the transfer of players trained in the club’s youth sector. As a result, the Andalusian institution has generated approx 1,000,000 euros for the costs related to the solidarity mechanism.

Currently the club has a team of engineers, math doctors and scientists who work on the development and enhancement of new tools equipped with artificial intelligence to improve efficiency and productivity in various fields.

The work in the Seville quarry is considered a point of reference in player training for clubs across Europe and the world.