AI reshapes decision-making in football

Artificial intelligence is increasingly being used in football in areas ranging from on-field performance and player transfers to refereeing decisions and player health, with the technology expected to become particularly influential in clubs’ decision-making processes.

Prof. Dr. Agah Tuğrul Korucu, a faculty member in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Istanbul Ticaret University, told that AI should not be viewed as a technology that will take football away from humans, but rather as a decision-support tool capable of identifying patterns in vast amounts of data that people would otherwise be unable to detect, CE Report quotes Anadolu Agency.

Korucu said AI is already being widely used for on-field performance analysis, but its greatest economic impact is expected to emerge in player transfers and squad management.

“AI is prompting clubs to ask not ‘Who is the best footballer?’ but ‘Who is the right footballer for our team?’” Korucu said.

He explained that a player’s success depends not only on individual ability but also on factors such as the team’s playing system, the characteristics of the league and the expectations of the coach.

“In the future, scouting observations, performance data, AI models, economic analysis and the coach’s assessment will be used together. AI’s ultimate impact on football will emerge not on the pitch, but in the overall quality of a club’s decision-making,” he said.

Opportunity for Anatolian clubs

Korucu said it would be inaccurate to speak of a fixed technological gap between all clubs in Türkiye and Europe, noting that professional Turkish clubs are already using technologies such as GPS, video analysis and performance tracking systems.

According to him, the main difference lies in integration, institutionalization and decision-making culture.

He stressed that the issue is not simply about budgets.

“Institutional decision-making has to be stronger than individual intuition. This does not mean eliminating human intuition, but making intuition testable through data,” Korucu said.

He noted that AI-powered scouting systems could provide significant advantages for Anatolian clubs with limited budgets.

Traditional scouting systems cannot realistically monitor thousands of players across leagues around the world. AI, however, can screen players according to criteria such as age, cost, physical characteristics and compatibility with a team’s playing system.

“AI will not replace the scout’s eye; it will expand the area the scout is able to see,” Korucu said.

He added that identifying players outside the major leagues before their market value increases could provide clubs with a competitive advantage. However, he stressed that final decisions should never be left solely to algorithms.

“Machines should measure, humans should interpret”

Korucu expects AI to play an increasingly important role in refereeing but said a distinction must be made between objectively measurable decisions and situations requiring interpretation.

Technology can provide a high degree of accuracy in determining whether a ball has crossed the goal line or establishing an offside line. However, human referees will continue to play a central role in subjective decisions involving fouls or penalties.

“I don’t see the future of refereeing as an ‘AI referee,’ but as an ‘AI-assisted referee,’” Korucu said. “The machine should measure, the human should interpret; the machine should make recommendations, but the human should bear responsibility.”

Ethical and legal risks surrounding player data

Korucu also highlighted the ethical and legal questions created by the growing amount of data collected from footballers, including GPS information, health data, sleep patterns, injury histories and biometric data.

This raises questions about data ownership, consent, data security and algorithmic discrimination, he said.

Korucu also does not expect AI to replace football coaches. Instead, he predicts the emergence of powerful “digital assistant coaches” that will support human managers.

“Sometimes a coach looks into a player’s eyes and sees something that a data system cannot see,” he said.

Korucu concluded that future competition in football will be shaped not only by the quality of players but also by clubs’ ability to use data effectively.

The most successful clubs, he said, will be those capable of combining human intelligence, football intelligence and artificial intelligence within the same decision-making system.

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