Andre Odeku was playing at the seventh level of English soccer when he got an unusual chance to take part in a practice match with Burnley’s Under-23 team. He was 18 at the time and was hoping that his performance could earn him a spot in the club’s academy.
“Their scouts came to me for a whole week of practice,” Odeku recalls. “I’d never encountered such a field before: the grass was absolutely pristine, the ball moved effortlessly and quickly, and there were Premier League players training right in front of us. I think they were impressed by our pitch presence and so they wanted to monitor me live during the match.”
His footballing career had taken off not in the traditional way, but rather through an app called AiSCOUT. Footballers can participate in virtual tests through the app and are rated by AI scoring systems and licensed scouts.
It was in the lower leagues of North London where Odeku made a name for himself. He scored 25 goals in 18 matches as a winger and won the 2021-222 season’s Golden Boot. Just a few days prior to the Burnley practice match, he had been performing push-ups in the park near his East London home. He was recording his activities on his smartphone and made sure to also include 10 meter sprints, jump and rebound jumps.
The creator of AiSCOUT, Darren Peries, was driven to build the platform after his son was released from Tottenham Hotspur’s youth team. As the AiSCOUT’s CEO and director of sports science, Richard Felton-Thomas explains, “Scouts from other teams had no information about him: no data, no game footage, no other training data. Even within the elite, professional leagues, the resources to compile comprehensive player profiles are quite limited.”
To ready the athletes for testing, the AI and data scientists integrated million of data-points into the AI Scout system. After performing basic athletic drills, participants are given a score based on technique, athleticism and accuracy. Those who succeed are asked to show their skills on the field.
Odeku aced the Burnley test which included an agility course and seven-cone weaves and soon after was invited to the club’s Barnfield training centre in Lancashire.
AiSCOUT offers a lifeline to players and scouts alike. Dishearteningly, Odeku himself had been rejected by Arsenal and Brentford at the young ages of 11 and 13, because of his small size. As his CEO says, “Clubs prioritize winning and so tend to discard less experienced players. There’s really no one to track their progress once they’ve been let go, which is why platforms like AiSCOUT are so important.”
Source: https://www.wired.com/story/ai-football-soccer-scouting/
