Nicolas Gagnon probably didn’t know it, but as he struggled to jot down all sorts of stats with “his four-color Bic pencil” as coach of the Montreal Impact U17 team, he germinate the idea of a revolution in the head of Tarik Agday.
“Helping decision-making” is the goal of Tarik Agday, a former player on the Impact reserve team. His company Sports AI, founded just two years ago, enables coaches, clubs, agents and players to get a better picture of athlete performance in soccer.
With the help of artificial intelligence (AI), the application offered by Sports AI makes it possible to count the actions of the players, but above all to put into context a package of events during a meeting: from a loss from the ball to the pressure of a block through the verticality of the passes. Everything went through with a fine-toothed comb.
“There are differences in the game between CF Montreal head coach Hernán Losada and his predecessor Wilfried Nancy. So to expect the same [statistical] result is not logical. We develop data that is suitable for the club to have a very objective evaluation. You can’t say to a piston: “You missed 20% of your crosses, you’re bad”, when the coach asks him to double his number of crosses. Yes, statistics are good, but you have to put them in context, ”summarizes Tarik Agday in an interview with La Presse.
Here, we are no longer talking about the days of the Bic pen and Gagnon’s Canada notebooks of the early 2010s. In fact, data is everywhere, but if it is not at the center of decisions, “the clubs that don’t use them will be left behind pretty quickly,” he says.
When Tarik Agday and his co-founder, Imrane Belhadia, set up the project at university, they quickly caught the eye of the Quebec soccer community. CF Montreal notably reached out to Sports AI during its development phase.
This feedback from the coaches has been key throughout the development process. Mr. Agday, who holds a B diploma at the national level as a coach, has also surveyed several coaches to find out what they wanted on such an application.
One who took great delight in providing feedback is the late Jason Di Tullio. “He responded to our survey by sending eight pages of responses,” Tarik Agday says with a smile. He had helped us a lot before he got sick. »
All that hard work has paid off. Earlier in March, Sports AI partnered with CFM’s U15 and U17 teams. Also, the company that started with two co-founders now has 17 employees and is preparing to launch a new version that will allow it to attract more partners.
Sports AI also offers a second service for MLS players. The company can send out a full “performance report” of their game. When Tarik Agday says performance report, it’s a file of up to 40 pages that can hit the table.
This report helps determine the strengths and weaknesses of the player and, thanks to AI, it can also predict the production of said player over several months. One aspect that may interest players is that with all this data, Sports AI draws comparative profiles in the circuit and can assess the market value of players. A situation that can be beneficial financially.
Sports AI only has soccer in its offer at the moment, but intends to honor its name in the medium term by including a component for college and university sports such as hockey and basketball. In short, it is not bread that is missing from the board of the Montreal company, which already has a second, a third and a fourth version in the boxes.
