Women's soccer coach reveals she used ChatGPT to work out tactics in stunning admission

The adoption of artificial intelligence has made its way into soccer, with one coach saying she consulted a service to work on tactics this season.

Laura Harvey, the head coach of the NWSL's Seattle Reign, has admitted to using ChatGPT when determining how to set up her team in this past season.

In an appearance on the Soccerish Podcast with Christina Unkel and Lori Lindsey, the former Arsenal Women's coach said she began to ask more vague questions to the AI chatbot service about strategies and style suggestions.

'One day in the off season, I was writing things into ChatGPT like, "what is Seattle Reign's identity?" And it would spurt it out. And I was like "I don't know if that's true or not,"' she said. 

'And then I put in "what formation should you play to beat NWSL teams?" and it spurted out every team in the league and what formation you should play. 

'And for two teams, it went "you should play a back five." So I did. No joke, that's why I did it.'

While seemingly a cavalier choice, Harvey said that before adopting the bot's suggestions, she and her coaching staff 'researched it, we did a deep dive on it, we thought about how we could play.' 

Harvey did not reveal the teams that she switched to a back-five for thanks to the help of the AI service.

However, women's soccer data analytics expert Kim McCauley revealed on her BlueSky account that the Reign first played with five-in-the-back against Orlando Pride in April - just four matchdays into the season.

'They lost 1-0, but did have about 0.5 more xG in that game,' McCauley posted.

She added, 'They've played significantly more back 5 than 4 since then. Anyone can look this up, not sure what the secrecy is about.' 

The Reign are sitting fourth in the NWSL and have conceded the fourth-least goals of everyone in the league.

It's a marked improvement from the year before, when the Reign finished second-last in the league and conceded the most goals of everyone.