Developing artificial intelligence tools to improve corner kicks

Analysis tools and similar aids have taken an increasingly large part of modern football. Nowadays, statistics, numbers and various video materials are largely used when clubs have to choose which players they want to include in the transfer market.

Now similar tools have also become key to Liverpool's development in set-piece situations, especially corner kicks. Reports This is Anfield stadium.

“Liverpool have teamed up with Google DeepMind to create a pioneering new tool powered by artificial intelligence. TacticAI is a kind of assistant robot, which, among other things, should be able to predict where the post will fall on a corner kick.”

Liverpool's goal in the League Cup Final against Chelsea is used as an example of how important corner kicks are. Virgil van Dijk then headed home the winner on the eve of the match after a cross from Kostas Tsimikas.

“The new product has learned from 7,176 corner kicks from Premier League matches from 2020 and 2021. It has worked with tracking data, consisting of players’ coordinates, to suggest which VHA should be improved on defensive and attacking set-pieces,” Thesesanfeld wrote.

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It was Liverpool who came up with the proposal to develop Tactic AI, the name of the tool, to focus more on corner kicks. Among other things, it may have something to do with the fact that the Reds often concede between five and 12-13 corner kicks per game.

– It is difficult to analyze a lot of what happens in open play, which can create more chaos than good. Increasing offensive and defensive corner kicks is a completely different matter, and if combined over the course of an entire season, could deliver significant benefits, says Peter Veljkovic, a researcher at Google DeepMind.

According to thisisanfield, Liverpool has had an ongoing collaboration with Google DeepMind for three years. It also goes hand in hand with the club's investment in computer science, a proposal that Michael Edwards put on the table.

– Teams at the top are always looking for advantages, and I think our results indicate that such technologies are likely to become part of modern football in the future, Veljkovic continues.

Liverpool want to be one of the leaders in developing such tools, and a collaboration with Google DeepMind is one of several projects in this part of the game being explored.