How Chelsea and Burnley are at the centre of an AI revolution that could change academy football

Chelsea and Burnley have been working with aiScout on new software to discover talent

Chelsea are one of the clubs to have trialled aiScout’s software

For football clubs, the search for the next big talent to emerge from the academy is a relentless pursuit.

Things have moved on somewhat from the traditional notion of how things should be done, where scouts would find a gem playing in their local area, and nothing but the eyes and ears of the scout would be good enough to get a player in the door.

Scouts are still a vital part of what football clubs do, and for all the data at the fingertips of the army of staff behind the scenes crunching the numbers, knowing what a player is like as a person, the strength of their character, and how they may be able to cope with the rigours of professional football at an elite level.

Football is a global game, and players arrive at club academies from all corners of the world now. The success stories are always far outweighed by tales of those who have fallen through the cracks and become lost to the game.

The advancement of technology has helped clubs evolve the way the approach recruitment at both youth and senior levels, with the focus having been centred on data analysis to find the right players, of the right profile, for the right system.

Artificial intelligence has for some time been looked on with a great degree of scepticism.

As a child of the 1980s, AI evokes memories of Skynet in The Terminator, and the initial reaction is one of terror that we’re all going to be under the control of robots in 100 years.

Of course, this is real life and not Hollywood, and the advancement of AI has its place in helping football clubs become more efficient, and help them find talent that may never have been discovered otherwise.