Football’s AI future: coach or computer?

This week the Scoreboard team attended a preview screening of F1, the imaginatively titled Hollywood blockbuster following the twists and turns of a fictional Formula 1 team, Expensify APX GP.

If you enjoyed Top Gun: Maverick, Creed or have a soft spot for Pixar’s Cars trilogy, then you’re bound to enjoy all 2 hrs and 36 mins of it. The Apple and Warner Brothers co-production is a lot of fun, and even if the action on the track is rather fanciful, F1 fans will surely get a kick out of seeing Toto Wolff (one of the film’s executive producers), Zak Brown and Stefano Domenicali appearing alongside Brad Pitt and Javier Bardem. The FT’s film critic gave it four stars.

Like an F1 car, the film is dripping with sponsors. Drivers sup Heineken 0.0 at every opportunity, while the APX GP team uniforms are made by Tommy Hilfiger (Lewis Hamilton, one of the brand’s ambassadors, was also a co-producer).

After exploding during lockdown on the back of Netflix show Drive to Survive, this is F1’s attempt to break into the US cultural mainstream. If successful, that could feed into an improved media rights deal in the US. While other sports are scrabbling around for investment or fighting regulatory fires, F1 still seems able to make long-term bets.

This week we bring you an interview with Ian Graham, the football data whizz, on what the next phase of sport’s technological revolution might look like. Plus we’ve got highlights from our recent Business of Tennis special report, and a round-up of news from a hectic week in the life of John Textor. Do read on — Josh Noble, sports editor

AI is changing how top football teams tick

Football has come a long way from the days when an all-seeing manager would handle everything from team selection and tactics to player recruitment. Data and analytics have reshaped modern football, but not everybody has bought into the trend. Some managers still prefer to go with gut feel instead of the numbers.

The FT’s Simon Kuper spoke to Ian Graham, Liverpool FC’s director of research for over a decade until 2023, for Sports Exchange, our new series featuring some of the most influential figures in sports ownership and leadership.

Graham, founder of sports advisory Ludonautics, played no small part in Liverpool’s Premier League and Champions League triumphs, even if Egyptian wonder Mo Salah and former manager Jürgen Klopp spent more time in the headlines.

While Liverpool has collaborated with Google DeepMind on artificial intelligence to improve the defence of corner kicks, many rivals remain somewhat less receptive to change.

Just don’t expect AI to do everything for your club. “The public conception is, ‘I’ll feed all this data into my AI model, and my model will identify the next Lionel Messi.’ That’s wrong,” Graham says. The problem he has with AI is that it’s a “black box” that “finds it difficult to explain its reasoning”, even if it is improving.

English Premier League clubs, says Graham, are ahead of the pack on trusting data to inform decisions. Most clubs in Europe still focus their energies on picking the right head coach and letting them call the shots.

“It’s still the standard approach in Italy, in Spain, and those teams still do very well in [mainland] Europe: the traditional coach-led show, it’s all about the tactics, that’s what’s going to win the game.”

There’s a drawback to the traditional methods, he says: “The number of coaches who make a difference in that way is limited. That approach puts all your eggs in one basket, the coach basket. It’s similar to the number of transfers that fail.”

English clubs in particular are moving to a system where committees — including coaches and data analysts — come together to make decisions on player signings. The increase in data capture will make it easier to form smarter opinions on who might fit in.

“It leaves us a more sophisticated understanding of what matters and who’s good. You can ask, ‘Is this player consistently picking what we consider to be the high-value option?’ The event data can’t see the other options. Tracking data lifts the lid on it all and says, ‘This is exactly what the player had in front of him.’”

But the real game-changer could be the mental side of football, one of the toughest areas to map out for the data crunchers. Players unwittingly offer clues on social media and in interviews, but assessing their mental state isn’t easy.

“Taking large quantities of unstructured, difficult-to-process data such as body language and facial expressions in interviews,” Graham says. “That’s the sort of thing that AI is good at.”

Read the rest of Graham’s insights here. And you can watch our Scoreboard video on the data arms race in football here.

The Business of Tennis

The Wimbledon Championships begin on Monday, and the FT has a wealth of stories to get you in the mood. Earlier this week we published our annual Business of Tennis special report. Here are the highlights:

Life at 150 For low-ranked professional tennis players, finances are tight. Many rack up huge credit card bills to pay for travel, coaches and physios, often with little prize money to show for it.

Interview: Naomi Osaka The former world number one player discusses tennis, business and the challenges of returning to the court after becoming a mother.

Who controls tennis? Players, tours and Grand Slams are all fighting for a bigger slice of the pie. As investment flows into the sport from private equity and sovereign wealth funds, the battle for money is likely to get more intense.

Challenger rackets New tennis equipment brands Furi, Diadem and Solinco are making bold bets in a sector that has long been dominated by big established names such as Wilson and Babolat.

Apps for amateurs A range of new coaching software and training gadgets can now bring casual players the kind of benefits once limited to the professionals.

Tennis TikTok The sport is making a big push on social media — with mixed results — as it tries to connect with the next generation of would-be tennis fans.

Riyadh’s tennis bet Saudi Arabia has been pouring money into tennis, sponsoring tours and tournaments and luring top players to the country. But is the sport taking hold at home? Our Riyadh correspondent went to find out.

But that’s not all. Our colleagues at FT Globetrotter have also been in tennis mode. They’ve been asking famous Londoners to pick their favourite park courts, and they have some top tips on how to choose a racket.

In a chart: the rise and rise of padel

We know that padel has been growing fast, but the latest annual survey of the sport — produced for booking app Playtomic — gives a sense of just how fast.

According to the Global Padel Report 2025, the number of courts across the world topped 50,000 in 2024, more than double the number in 2020. Last year almost 9 new padel clubs a day opened, while the UK has emerged as the most valuable market per court.

The growth of grassroots padel explains why the investors behind the Hexagon Cup — a professional padel tournament based on the Laver Cup in tennis — are now setting their sights on amateur leagues.

Highlights

• John Textor, the former skateboarder and fuboTV boss, has been threatened with legal action by three investors who backed his takeover of French football club Olympique Lyonnais. Hedge fund billionaire Jamie Dinan and co-investors Alexander Knaster and Edward Eisler are demanding he repurchase $93mn of shares in Eagle Football Holding, which also owns Brazilian champions Botafogo and Belgium’s RWD Molenbeek. Read the FT scoop here.

• The dispute came a day after Lyon was relegated from Ligue 1 by the French football regulator due to the sorry state of its finances. The club has €445mn in debts, and lost €117mn in the first half of its financial year. Lyon has vowed to appeal.

• Meanwhile Textor is on his way out at Crystal Palace. He agreed on Monday to sell his roughly 45 per cent stake in the Premier League club to Woody Johnson, owner of the New York Jets and a former US ambassador to the UK. Some of the funds raised will head to Lyon, and some will be used to reduce debts owed to Ares Management by Eagle Football Holding.

• The NBA has approved the $1.5bn sale of the Minnesota Timberwolves and the WNBA’s Lynx to ecommerce entrepreneur Marc Lore and retired baseball star Alex Rodriguez. The deal was initially agreed more than four years ago, but former owner Glen Taylor attempted to cancel the sale last year, leading to a bitter fight for control of the teams.

Transfer Market

• Volleyball World, the sport’s commercial arm backed by private equity group CVC Capital Partners, named Ugo Valensi as its new chief executive. Valensi joined from Grand Slam Tennis, the body that manages collaboration between the Australian Open, Roland-Garros, Wimbledon and the US Open.

Final Whistle

What do Diego Maradona and 28-year-old physical education teacher Christian Gray from New Zealand have in common? Both of their names will forever be associated with Argentine football club Boca Juniors.

Only Gray stunned the South American powerhouse when he scored the equaliser that earned a 1-1 draw for amateur team Auckland City in the Club World Cup.

“I’m from a small town, a long way from here and a lot different to this environment. So it is somewhat of a dream,” Gray said.

You can watch this underdog story here.