The implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) in sports, especially in football, has integrated rapidly and effectively, with the emergence of Kognia Sports helping coaches acquire better insights by elevating performance and making improvements to training sessions, in what is a time-consuming and requiring intensive labour activity.
Utilising AI to execute it in the analysis of player performance has been an innovation in technology that coaches have been crying out for, in helping teams reach their full potential. This data also provides assistance for coaches by picking out a player’s strengths and weaknesses, and to upgrade strategies of the game for efficiently deploying performance outcomes.
The procedure of machine learning is training algorithms to make prognosis or decisions based around input data. The plan is to deploy an algorithm to automatically adapt to various patterns in the data, in place of explaining it in great detail of programming the system with rules.
The innovative software wields both AI and machine learning to fabricate automatic tactical examination in football matches based around on state-of-the-art football know-how to identify the strategic foundations from videos and involves no extra data to be broken down, differentiating from other markets.
One of the main technologies that are applied at Kognia is computer vision, a feature of AI that allows video footage of athletes to be analysed, giving the analysts and coaches to track a team or a player’s behaviours.
By removing manual coding and other low-quality duties, the sports technology company is replacing them with superior-quality jobs such as an evaluation of the performance for the coaching team or player – in return assisting off-the-pitch as well as on-the-pitch calculated decision-making.
CEO and Co-founder of Kognia, Maurici A. Lopez-Felip, is the former Head of Research in the Methodology Division at FC Barcelona – an expert behavioural scientist, who in the past was engaged in Ecological Physics and acquired a PhD from the University of Connecticut. His experience combines into a practice-oriented approach into both science and football, leading to the evolution of the system.
Last year in December, Swedish club AIK signed a partnership with Kognia Sports to use the tool across the seniors and youth teams at the club. The analysis system aligns with the approach to coaching advancements for the Stockholm-based football club, along with the research and development and applying it to AIK’s child and youth departments.
The cutting-edge technologies provided by the company help them to focus on the more important areas – some of the features include but are not limited to is online video manager, single game timeline view and customised tactical overlays.
Currently in use at some clubs in La Liga such as FC Barcelona and Villarreal CF, with both teams using them for men’s and women’s squads supports their traditional methods by integrating modern technology internally.
Revolutionising the world of football analysis by taking it towards the direction of making it quicker and cost-efficient, Kognia wants to break down the limitations in football that still exist despite having been hugely developed in by making major strides in recent years.
The system that has been implemented will be hugely beneficial for young and upcoming players. The programme will not only be able to detect patterns, but will also have the ability to produce an automatic concept of opportunities for action in relevant contextual environments, making the tool much more powerful.
The ability to determine all the details that seem too qualitative to measure, such as the reception of the ball in between the lines, and changing position for the striker in the back of the lines, were only appreciated by the sight of the manager. Now, the technology will be able to capture exactly that.
