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The FIFA World Cup starts soon. For the first time, each team will have an AI coach.<\/span><\/p>\n FIFA via Getty Images<\/small><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n When Mexico kicks off against South Africa at Estadio Azteca on June 11, the 2026 World Cup will be the biggest in the tournament\u2019s history: 48 teams, 104 matches, three countries. It will also be the first World Cup where every single team walks in with the same AI analyst sitting on the bench.<\/p>\n Or maybe not exactly sitting. And not quite on the bench, either. Think of FIFA AI Pro more as a coach in the cloud, perhaps. With, of course, a perfect photographic memory of thousands of soccer games.<\/p>\n Essentially, it\u2019s ChatGPT for football (or soccer, depending on where you live). Co-developed by FIFA and tournament sponsor Lenovo and unveiled in January at CES, FIFA AI Pro is an AI assistant that lets all 48 World Cup teams query FIFA\u2019s exclusive match data \u2014 millions of data points across 2,000+ metrics \u2014 and get tactical insights back as video, animated replays, and 3D avatars. <\/p>\n Teams can ask FIFA AI Pro almost any kind of match-related question:<\/p>\n Under the hood, Lenovo says it has analyzed more than 2,000 distinct metrics from thousands of games. In other words, this isn\u2019t a generic LLM model that has been adapted for soccer. It uses FIFA’s own tracking data, player telemetry, and historical tactical analysis \u2014 every camera angle and body sensor from every match \u2014 plugged directly into the back end.<\/p>\n “You can actually go ask ChatGPT who’s going to win the match,” one Lenovo executive told me. “But it doesn’t have the data set.”<\/p>\n Only FIFA has all the data, making FIFA AI Pro potentially much smarter about its answers and recommendations. <\/p>\n Analysts can compare team patterns using video and 3D avatars. Coaches can get a tactical sandbox: a place to test how a formation change might play out against their next opponent before trying it IRL. Players can get personalized analysis of their own game.<\/p>\n According to FIFA, it keeps learning during the tournament. New match data will flow into the AI engine within two to three hours of the final whistle, so by the round of 16, FIFA AI Pro will be smarter than it is now. (And, of course, more up-to-date as teams try new tactics and see success or failure with them during the tournament.)<\/p>\n<\/section>\n The big teams, the ones who are favorites to win or at least go far already employ rooms full of analysts, assistant coaches and maybe even data scientists. <\/p>\n For them, FIFA AI Pro is probably a nice-to-have. It\u2019s unlikely to be a revelation. <\/p>\n But at the other end of the spectrum, this year\u2019s field includes Cura\u00e7ao and Cabo Verde, two of the smallest nations ever to reach a World Cup. Teams like that probably don\u2019t have the budget to staff an analytics department. For them, an AI tool like this isn\u2019t a marginal upgrade. It\u2019s kind of the entire department, handed over for free.<\/p>\n Of course, this is the first year FIFA will be using this kind of technology. So we\u2019ll have to see if it really helps \u2013 does Moneyball<\/em> work in football \u2013 or if good old fashioned soccer sense from coaches with decades of experience will still have an edge.<\/p>\n At least theoretically now, however, FIFA AI pro will raises the floor and compress the analytics gap between the richest federations and the poorest ones. That\u2019s a genuinely interesting factor to watch for: will we see more upsets this year than usual, or more exotic defensive or offensive schemes?<\/p>\n Of course, everyone has it. And when every team gets the same tool, the tool itself stops being an advantage \u2026 if they all use it. In that scenario, the edge moves to who interprets it best and who actually acts on what it says, so there\u2019s still a human coach making a human call. Also, another caveat: note the two-to-three-hour turnaround in processing match data. This is a preparation tool, not an in-match strategy engine. So humans are still in charge.<\/p>\n This is the question I kept circling back to, when chatting with Lenovo and FIFA executives.<\/p>\n\n
How FIFA AI Pro actually works<\/h2>\n
This helps smaller teams more than bigger teams<\/h2>\n
My big question: will fans \u2014 and kids \u2014 ever get it?<\/h3>\n