Seattle Reign head coach Laura Harvey says she has leaned on artificial intelligence (AI) service ChatGPT to help inspire her tactics in the NWSL this season.
The 45-year-old former Arsenal coach said she casually started testing the chatbot’s women’s soccer knowledge, before quizzing what ideas it might have for individual teams.
“One day in the offseason, 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,’” Harvey told the Soccerish Podcast.
“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.”
Harvey made the admission after being asked how she had evolved over the course of a two-decade coaching career, but she had never started playing a ‘back five’ of defenders until this season but her coaching team went on a “deep dive” to evaluate its benefits, with the tactical setup used on multiple occasions this term.
“I’d never really done a lot of research on it,” Harvey added of the formation. “I’d never really, like, invested into how it could be played in the women’s game. I’d only ever really seen it from afar, you know, watching men’s games really.
“It was always sort of talked about as a way to see games out. You know, (you go ahead) and get into a back five and stop people from scoring, was sort of how, like, a back five had been talked about for me.”
With one match remaining in the regular season, the Reign are fourth in the 14-team NWSL, in a play-off spot, with 10 wins from 25 matches. This marks a vast improvement from last season, when they finished 13th.
Harvey, who previously coached the Reign between 2013 and 2017, rejoined the club in 2021. The Brit has won three NWSL Shields with Seattle and The Women’s Cup in 2022.
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