How AI-powered recruiting helps Spain’s leading soccer team score

Phrases
like
“striking
the
post”
and
“direct
free
kick
outside
the
18”
may
seem
foreign
if
you’re
not
a
fan
of
football
(for
Americans,
see:
soccer).
But
for
a
football
scout,
it’s
the
daily
lexicon
of
the
job,
representing
crucial
language
that
helps
assess
a
player’s
value
to
a
team.
And
now,
it’s
also
the
language
spoken
and
understood
by
Scout
Advisor—an
innovative
tool
using
natural
language
processing
(NLP)
and
built
on
the
IBM®
watsonx™
platform
especially
for
Spain’s
Sevilla
Fútbol
Club. 

On
any
given
day,
a
scout
has
several
responsibilities:
observing
practices,
talking
to
families
of
young
players,
taking
notes
on
games
and
recording

lots
of
follow-up
paperwork.
In
fact,
paperwork
is
a
much
more
significant
part
of
the
job
than
one
might
imagine. 

As
Victor
Orta,
Sevilla
FC
Sporting
Director,
explained
at
his
conference
during
the
World
Football
Summit
in
2023:
“We
are
never
going
to
sign
a
player
with
data
alone,
but
we
will
never
do
it
without
resorting
to
data
either.
In
the
end,
the
good
player
will
always
have
good
data,
but
then
there
is
always
the
human
eye,
which
is
the
one
that
must
evaluate
everything
and
decide.” 

Read
on
to
learn
more
about
IBM
and
Sevilla
FC’s
high-scoring
partnership. 

Benched
by
paperwork 

Back
in
2021,
an
avalanche
of
paperwork
plagued
Sevilla
FC,
a
top-flight
team
based
in
Andalusia,
Spain.
With
an
elite
scouting
team
featuring
20-to-25
scouts,
a
single
player
can
accumulate
up
to
40
scout
reports,
requiring
200-to-300
hours
of
review.
Overall,
Sevilla
FC
was
tasked
with
organizing
more
than
200,000
total
reports
on
potential
players—an
immensely
time-consuming
job. 

Combining
expert
observation
alongside
the
value
of
data
remained
key
for
the
club.
Scout
reports
look
at
the
quantitative
data
of
game-time
minutiae,
like
scoring
attempts,
accurate
pass
percentages,
assists,
as
well
as
qualitative
data
like
a
player’s
attitude
and
alignment
with
team
philosophy.
At
the
time,
Sevilla
FC
could
efficiently
access
and
use
quantitative
player
data
in
a
matter
of
seconds,
but
the
process
of
extracting
qualitative
information
from
the
database
was
much
slower
in
comparison.  

In
the
case
of
Sevilla
FC,
using
big
data
to
recruit
players
had
the
potential
to
change
the
core
business.
Instead
of
scouts
choosing
players
based
on
intuition
and
bias
alone,
they
could
also
use
statistics,
and
confidently
make
better
business
decisions
on
multi-million-dollar
investments
(that
is,
players).
Not
to
mention,
when,
where
and
how
to
use
said
players.
But
harnessing
that
data
was
no
easy
task. 

Getting
the
IBM
assist

Sevilla
FC
takes
data
almost
as
seriously
as
scoring
goals.
In
2021,
the
club
created
a
dedicated
data
department
specifically
to
help
management
make
better
business
decisions.
It
has
now
grown
to
be
the
largest
data
department
in
European
football,
developing
its
own
AI
tool
to
help
track
player
movements
through
news
coverage,
as
well
as
internal
ticketing
solutions.  

But
when
it
came
to
the
massive
amount
of
data
collected
by
scouters,
the
department
knew
it
had
a
challenge
that
would
take
a
reliable
partner.
Initially,
the
department
consulted
with
data
scientists
at
the
University
of
Sevilla
to
develop
models
to
organize
all
their
data.
But
soon,
the
club
realized
it
would
need
more
advanced
technology.
A
cold
call
from
an
IBM
representative
was
fortuitous. 

“I
was
contacted
by
[IBM
Client
Engineering
Manager]
Arturo
Guerrero
to
know
more
about
us
and
our
data
projects,”
says
Elias
Zamora,
Sevilla
FC
chief
data
officer.
“We
quickly
understood
there
were
ways
to
cooperate.
Sevilla
FC
has
one
of
the
biggest
scouting
databases
in
the
professional
football,
ready
to
be
used
in
the
framework
of
generative
AI
technologies.
IBM
had
just
released
watsonx,
its
commercial
generative
AI
and
scientific
data
platform
based
on
cloud.
Therefore,
a
partnership
to
extract
the
most
value
from
our
scouting
reports
using
AI
was
the
right
initiative.”  

Coordinating
the
play 

Sevilla
FC
connected
with
the
IBM
Client
Engineering
team
to
talk
through
its
challenges
and
a
plan
was
devised.  

Because
Sevilla
FC
was
able
to
clearly
explain
its
challenges
and
goals—and
IBM
asked
the
right
questions—the
technology
soon
followed.
The
partnership
determined
that
IBM
watsonx.ai™
would
be
the
best
solution
to
quickly
and
easily
sift
through
a
massive
player
database
using
foundation
models
and
generative
AI
to
process
prompts
in
natural
language.
Using
semantic
language
for
search
provided
richer
results:
for
instance,
a
search
for
“talented
winger”
translated
to
“a
talented
winger
is
capable
of
taking
on
defenders
with
dribbling
to
create
space
and
penetrate
the
opposition’s
defense.”  

The
solution—titled
Scout
Advisor—presents
a
curated
list
of
players
matching
search
criteria
in
a
well-designed,
user-friendly
interface.
Its
technology
helps
unlock
the
entire
potential
of
the
Sevilla
FC’s
database,
from
the
intangible
impressions
of
a
scout
to
specific
data
assets. 

Scoring
the
goal 

Scout
Advisor’s
pilot
program
went
into
production
in
January
2024,
and
is
currently
training
with
200,000
existing
reports.
The
club’s
plan
is
to
use
the
tool
during
the
summer
2024
recruiting
season
and
see
results
in
September.
So
far,
the
reviews
have
been
positive. 
 
 
“Scout
Advisor
has
the
capability
to
revolutionize
the
way
we
approach
player
recruitment,”
Zamora
says.
“It
permits
the
identification
of
players
based
on
the
opinion
of
football
experts
embedded
in
the
scouting
reports
and
expressed
in
natural
language.
That
is,
we
use
the
technology
to
fully
extract
the
value
and
knowledge
of
our
scouting
department.”  

And
with
the
time
saved,
scouts
can
now
concentrate
on
human
tasks:
connecting
with
recruits,
watching
games
and
making
decisions
backed
by
data. 

When
considering
the
high
functionality
of
Scout
Advisor’s
NLP
technology,
it’s
natural
to
think
about
how
the
same
technology
can
be
applied
to
other
sports
recruiting
and
other
functions.
But
one
thing
is
certain:
making
better
decisions
about
who,
when
and
why
to
play
a
footballer
has
transformed
the
way
Sevilla
FC
recruits.  

Says
Zamora:
“This
is
the
most
revolutionary
technology
I
have
seen
in
football.”
 
 
Want
to
learn
how
watsonx
technology
can
score
goals
for
your
team? 

See
what
watsonx
can
do