England Uses Artificial Intelligence for Better Penalties: A Boost for 2026 World Cup?
Because of the prominence of VAR and semi-automated offside, fans have seen AI become more heavily integrated into football. But the technology is also being heavily used behind the scenes by coaching staff to study tactics and configure specific training programmes for individual players. Technology is rapidly changing the world of football, and England’s national team will be leaning heavily on AI to try and bring home the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
England’s most recent penalty shoot-out heartbreak came in the Euro 2020 Final, where they missed three consecutive spot kicks in front of home support at Wembley Stadium to suffer a defeat against Italy. In the World Cup specifically, the Three Lions have a 25% success rate from previous penalty shootouts, including their dreadful effort in 2006 when they missed three out of four kicks, and their infamous Italia ‘90 semi-final exit against West Germany when Chris Waddle fired the decisive kick over the bar.
Of the eleven major tournament penalty shootouts England have been involved in, they have won only four. A lot of bettors will put a patriotic flutter on England to win the next World Cup, and the Three Lions will go there as one of the leading contenders in the betting odds. For a broad range of events and matches punters can follow top sporting insights by taking a look at the Legalbet free betting tips – predictions from the experts of Legalbet, a service which rates betting sites and provides useful betting info. But come the next World Cup, England fans will be hoping that the team doesn’t fall foul of another penalty shoot-out exit, and the English camp has turned to AI to help prevent that from happening.
The New Teammate
The good news for England is that their shoot-out record has improved drastically in recent years. After losing five of them in a row, England have now won three of their last four, a run that started with a victory over Colombia at the 2018 World Cup. This has coincided with a deeper look at the art of penalties, with the help of AI to scour enormous banks of historical data to find interesting and valuable information that England can capitalise on.
Such is the processing power of AI, the FA’s head of performance insights and analysis, Rhys Long, stated that with the use of AI, what would normally take five days of information collecting about one team’s penalty habits can now be done in about five hours. It’s a phenomenal advantage, and considering that England will be one of 48 teams at the newly expanded 2026 World Cup, the speed of information gathering is crucial.
The new AI teammate in the England camp will provide valuable data about every player in every squad that goes to the World Cup. It will be able to scour through historical footage of players taking penalties to identify patterns that may be far too nuanced for a human coach to pick up on. It’s this angle that England head coach Thomas Tuchel and his backroom staff hope will give them an advantage.
Breaking It Down
There are two sides to having a successful penalty shoot-out: stopping opposition shots and converting your own. England’s number one goalkeeper, Jordan Pickford, who is likely to be starting for the Three Lions at the World Cup, will get a condensed version of everything that AI produces about an opponent. That will include the most likely spot a particular player will target, but also any tells that the goalkeeper could pick up on in the moment to increase the probability of a save.
AI will be creating 12-yard algorithm “success maps” for the England players taking penalties in a shoot-out as well. AI will blend a player’s preferred striking style, analysing how that will work best against the weakness of the goalkeeper they are facing. The detailed AI projection will model the best output for the individuals taking the kicks.
Handling the Pressure
Having all the information compiled by AI technology sounds fantastic, but there’s one thing that it can’t put into the calculations, and that’s the human variables. There’s no way to tell how confident, how focused, how fatigued, and simply how well a player will handle the pressure of such a big occasion on the day.
The tension and pressure of taking a penalty in a World Cup shoot-out is like nothing else that exists in a game. England is already laying the tactical groundwork with the help of AI to try and bring stronger odds on their side. But come the tournament, it’s not AI that’s walking from the centre circle with the weight of expectancy from 60 million fans on its shoulders. The insights could give players more confidence when stepping up, but whether the AI coaching will prove to be a significant boost remains to be seen.