Soccer is the most popular sport in the world. Played on six continents and in nearly every country, it represents a universal language. And now, for the millions of young footballers who dream of becoming the next Pelé or Maradona, as well as the teams that aim to sit atop the standings of the various world leagues, there’s an app that can help.

The London-based aiScout program hopes to revolutionize the way that teams and leagues scout top soccer talent. It enables individual players to upload their own, self-recorded footage of themselves engaged in a series of 75 drills, which the company identified as critical to defining players’ skills. In turn, the AI underlying the program rates and scores each player. The assessment reflects the players’ displayed skills while also using these data to establish predictions about their future performance, in terms of their athletic ability and their cognitive capacities. Beyond the ratings assigned to the individual applicants, aiScout compares them with existing benchmarks, set by current league players. 

If soccer leagues or clubs choose to join the system, they can access the summary results and then, if interested, watch the videos themselves. In this sense, they can efficiently conduct virtual trials around the world, with the promise of finding an unknown, remarkable talent. Such promise is substantial, considering the wealth of talent found throughout the world, including among small international teams that often lack the sorts of resources needed to attract scouts for the major leagues. Furthermore, teams and leagues can sort players according to various criteria and categories, such as limiting them to certain age ranges, highlighting players in a particular position, or seeking out those that perform best on specific skills (e.g., power, speed).

Although a trial version of the software has been available since 2019, at which point it attracted interest from players from 125 countries, it only hard launched in 2023. Since that time, aiScout claims to have facilitated the signing of 135 players with either national teams or professional clubs. It identifies Ben Greenwood as the first success story: Without ever participating in a formal trial, he was recruited by Chelsea Football Club, then ultimately signed by AFC Bournemouth. In response to such anecdotal evidence, an estimated 100,000 players have signed up, and approximately 100 professional clubs gain insights from it.

Even as aiScout promises to enhance the talent scouting process, it freely acknowledges the limitations of the technology. It recommends that teams and leagues use the AI tools as complements to, rather than substitutes for, their expert human scouts. The company might make scouts’ jobs easier, and facilitate connections between individual players seeking a spot and teams looking for talent, but it cannot provide a clear sense of a player’s “grit” or character. It is a tool—an advanced one to be certain, but still a tool that should be used in addition to and in combination with all the other resources that teams dedicate to achieving success.

Discussion Questions 

1. How much human intervention is required before using the results produced by this particular AI-based technology?
2. Are there other relevant market research options for teams and professional scouts that would enable them to gather such insights about players from around the world?

Sources:Jack Bantock, “Top Soccer Clubs Are Using an AI-Powered App to Scout Future Stars,” CNN, March 1, 2024; Steve Price, “Artificial Intelligence Could Be About to Change Soccer Player Scouting,” Forbes, June 21, 2022; Vinay Patel, “Turning Data into Goals: AIScout Is Revolutionising How Soccer Talent Is Recruited,” International Business Times, June 6, 2024