The sheer scale of data being recorded at this summer’s World Cup is unprecedented. FIFA, the tournament organiser, will track around 150 million data points per match. Inside the ball alone, sensors monitoring IMUs (Inertial Measurement Units) will log 500 movements per second to trace the ball's motion.

If that sounds excessive, Patrick Lucey can go further. “The thing with soccer is that there are more permutations in a game than there are atoms in the universe,” he says. Lucey is chief scientist at Stats Perform, whose work underpins almost the entire global soccer ecosystem.

AI now enables data to be collected across matches around the globe like never before, and staff inside teams are pushing boundaries to crunch that data at unprecedented speed. At the World Cup, swathes of information will be manipulated and analysed, by humans and AI, to find a cutting edge.

FIFA’s attempt to level the playing field with its bespoke AI agent is just one way smaller nations can innovate. Curaçao used their own data for “diaspora tracking,” mapping parentage, identifying eligible players, and using geospatial data to plan scouting trips and organise trials. England and Uruguay are also leveraging AI for penalty analysis, knowing a penalty shoot-out can knock them out.

But with technology comes challenges. More data doesn’t always mean better insights; it just means more work to find the right ones. Analysts’ jobs have become both easier and harder because of this abundance of information.