Zone 7: AI-powered injury prevention

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Adversity has separated football stars from greatness throughout the history of the sport. Even the brightest of stars, those considered unstoppable, were halted by a roadblock of some sort. Injury is widely recognised as the sport’s most rampant and formidable roadblock.

For athletes, injury means being sidelined from the sport they are passionate about, sometimes for months at a time. This has proven to have a considerable impact on their mental well-being. For the club, player injuries can lead to extreme financial and competitive consequences.

Zone7, a data-driven and AI-powered human performance company, recognises both the physical and psychological impact of injury. It is, therefore, their aim to predict and prevent injury. Zone7 utilises an AI-driven platform to leverage analytics and support coaches, medical staff, and performance teams in optimising athlete performance.

Zone7 was founded in 2017 and is based in the United States. Since its inception, the company has logged over 200 million hours of athletic action.

The purpose of Zone7

The overarching function of Zone7 is to detect injury risk, which allows professionals to advise the affected athlete. Performance and medical technologies can offer sports organisations key data sets.

However, without the capability to contextualise them, these data sets are far less valuable in consistent and reliable intervention.  Zone7 is powered by data from tens of thousands of athlete injuries and therefore provides the required context.

Zone7 provides accurate injury predictions as well as real-time training suggestions. These suggestions are designed to optimise athlete workloads, recovery periods, and performance. Each of these factors is crucial in avoiding injury.

Zone7 separates itself from other data collection platforms through device agnostic AI. This feature allows an on-board device to analyse an athlete’s performance and detect otherwise invisible injury patterns. These findings, alongside mitigation strategies, are then able to be accessed via the Zone7 app. The app also features load management prescriptions and a weekly planner and periodisation simulator.

The core services offered by Zone7 have lightened the workload of professionals within sports organisations by removing the need to manually gather and analyse data. More importantly, sports organisations that utilise Zone7’s AI platform have seen improved player availability compared to prior seasons.

Benefits to Australian football clubs and organisations

Zone7 has been leveraged by many organisations across several sports. The platform is especially popular in the football world. Liverpool, Rangers, Queens Park Rangers, and Los Angeles FC are among the most notable of those advised by Zone7’s AI learning technology. As such, the program has proven to be a useful asset for elite sports teams, especially in football.

Liverpool has been utilising Zone7’s services since the 2021/22 Premier League season. Given Liverpool’s status as one of the world’s top clubs and the most recent Premier League champions, other clubs should consider their approach. This includes Australian football clubs, especially those in the A-League as they are particularly ambitious.

A prospective observational study found that from the 2012/13 to the 2017/18 A-League season, injury incidence ranged between 4.8 and 6.7 injuries per match-round. This shows the prevalence and impact of injury in the highest level of the Australian football ecosystem.

Considering the proven physical demands and extreme injury risk involved with the sport, A-League clubs could benefit massively from Zone7. These benefits extend beyond just reducing injury rates. The platform could foster long-term player development and possibly extend athletes’ careers. These advantages are invaluable for A-League clubs considering the competitive environment they operate in.

Conclusion

The A-League’s continuous push toward higher standards of performance and competitiveness requires clubs to embrace cutting-edge technology such as Zone7. This is especially the case for minimising injuries as the players are the club’s most valuable assets.

Through the use of Zone7, A-League clubs can ensure the long-term physical and mental wellbeing of their athletes and increase their chances of on-field success.

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WA Government and Virgin Australia Partner to Bring Discounted Flights for Italian Football Series in Perth

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The Western Australian Government has partnered with Virgin Australia to offer discounted airfares to Perth ahead of a three-match series featuring AC Milan, Inter Milan, Juventus and Palermo, in a move that reflects how state governments are increasingly using major sporting fixtures as tools of tourism and economic strategy.

Subsidising travel costs rather than simply promoting the matches signals a shift in how state governments are approaching major sporting events. WA Tourism Minister Reece Whitby positioned the series within the state’s broader Winter of Unmissable Sport strategy, framing the partnership as a way to fill hotels, support local businesses and generate visible economic activity across a single week of programming. That logic places football alongside other major events states have used to justify public investment in visitor attraction, where the return is measured in tourism spend rather than ticket revenue alone.

A bet on Australia’s appetite for European football

Touring Italian clubs is not a routine occurrence in Australia, and Sport and Recreation Minister Rita Saffioti’s comments point to an underlying assumption behind the investment: that the existing fan base for European football in Australia is substantial enough to justify a state government underwriting travel costs to fill a stadium on the other side of the country.

Australian audiences for international football have grown considerably over the past decade, driven by streaming access, diaspora communities and the rising visibility of leagues once difficult to follow locally. State governments positioning themselves to capture economic value from that growth, rather than leaving it to broadcasters and travel operators, marks a change in how football’s commercial footprint in Australia is being treated by policymakers.

It also raises a question likely to recur as more international club fixtures are scheduled in Australian cities: whether public subsidy for travel around marquee football events delivers economic value beyond the host city, or whether the benefit is concentrated narrowly within the host state’s tourism and hospitality sectors. Virgin Australia’s involvement reflects the commercial logic on the airline side, with the partnership forming part of a broader push to connect Australians with major domestic and international destinations.

For the domestic football industry, the series is a reminder that international club football is competing for the same audience attention as the A-Leagues and grassroots competitions. Whether that competition proves complementary or extractive, in terms of where football-related spending in Australia ultimately lands, is a question state and national football bodies are likely to watch closely as similar fixtures become more frequent.

Referee Omar Artan appointed to UEFA Super Cup Final

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Image credit: BBC

The Somali referee will officiate the 2026 UEFA Super Cup in August between Paris Saint-Germain and Aston Villa.

 

World Cup controversy to Super Cup support

As 2025’s CAF Men’s Referee of the Year, Artan stands as one of the world’s leading match officials.

His expertise and skill allowed him to enter FIFA’s international list in 2018, and has since proved an outstanding ability as a referee, culminating in the CAF Men’s Referee of the Year award last year.

Despite Artan’s capabilities and reputation, his dream of officiating this summer’s World Cup tournament met a premature ending. The referee couldn’t enter into the US after arriving on a diplomatic passport and single entry visa, and was subsequently forced to return home to Somalia.

But Artan’s journey as a referee on the global stage is far from over, as UEFA and CAF confirmed that Artan will officiate the UEFA Super Cup clash between Champions League winners, PSG, and Europa League winners, Aston Villa, in Salzburg this August.

 

Upholding the partnership

In April of this year, UEFA and CAF signed a new Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), which promised to utilise mutual support to encourage development, inclusion and wellbeing in football.

The MoU aligns unity, cohesion and partnership between two powerhouse continents of world football.

And now, the alignment is stronger and clearer than ever. In the midst of a major blow to Artan’s personal and professional dreams, UEFA and CAF’s partnership provided an opportunity.

“Omar is an excellent young but already experienced referee, who has proven himself at the highest competition level of the Confederation of African Football,” said UEFA President Aleksander Čeferin via media release.

“Football is made to connect people, and UEFA wants to show its respect to Omar and his outstanding officiating skills, which had earned him such a prestigious nomination.”

Furthermore, CAF President, Dr Patrice Motsepe, outlined why the initiative perfectly embodies the nature of a partnership between UEFA and CAF.

“This is a great honour for Omar Artan and for African referees and is also an excellent example of football bringing together and uniting people from Africa and Europe and worldwide.”

 

Final thoughts

Out of bitter disappointment and controversy comes a far more positive reflection of football’s influence and impact. It also proves that an MoU is more than just signatures, but a genuine promise to support the game and all within it.

A partnership like this has the power to help millions at once.

But sometimes, helping just one person is all it takes to prove its worth.

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