Ben Griffis

@avisualgame Basketball games are also shorter in length than soccer games. Different season lengths too, Ronaldo isn’t playing 80+ games a season every season, every 2 days LeBron isn’t running nonstop for 90+ minutes either Can’t say which is more intense/demanding/a better feat

@avisualgame It’s hard to compare sports, obviously you can’t compare the physical demands of fluid, non-stop contact sports like soccer and basketball (and rugby and Aussie rules and hockey) to baseball But both players playing at the elite level at 40+ is beyond mental

Do you reckon a long elite basketball or elite football career is harder on the body? For example, Cristiano Ronaldo has played 46,594 more in-game minutes in his career than LeBron has, about 75 days of game-time more across similar length careers. Or is the NBA more intense?

Danmarks vestligste punkt 🇩🇰 ☀️

Short review of Bohs v Dundalk Nothing strange or startling but some positives for both sides, particularly Kilduff’s men Let’s jump into it ⬇️

@ahansen314 @STLSoccerNews It does default to blue/red Which makes me, a Spurs supporter, question my choice every away game at Arsenal 🤮

@STLSoccerNews @BeGriffis Hilarious that City is in blue and NE is in red as I assume it just defaults to home / away but still

Here's the Match Report for CITY's 3-1 win against New England on Saturday from @BeGriffis, available at football-match-reports.streamlit.app

@Benner_bs @MarcoLai_23 💪💪💪💪🫡

@BeGriffis @MarcoLai_23 VAMOOOOOS

From Twitter to Top 6 on the last day 💪 @MarcoLai_23

What a crazy penalty shootout

A really honest and vulnerable moment from the #UCLToday crew to open today's show 🥹❤️

Scottish fans: "a manager using a tactics board during games, what a nonce trying to show you're smart" English fans: "a manager taking notes during a game, what a nonce trying to show you're smart"

Their pressing is intense and effective... by far the lowest PPDA and also the highest defensive intensity (defensive actions per minute) This helps them hold opponents to the lowest xT per 100 possessions as well

Venezia are having quite the extreme season @twelve_football data has them as effectively the best team in every aspect of play through a possession & pressing approach

@hallettsgrarmy AI is built off data and data alone is not the way to make a decision imo Data is a tool to aid decision making at clubs. It’s a curve though, as no data or too little can lead to less optimal decisions, and putting too much emphasis only on data also can lead to less optimal

@BeGriffis Great write up Ben, what are your thoughts on Judan Ali, he is cautious that AI shouldn’t be used alone but as part of the process: youtube.com/shorts/aP8Xrro…

Great article to help explain how AI (or really, in most cases, “AI”) is used nowadays and how it isn’t going to just replace data people at clubs It’s not just plugging stuff into ChatGPT. I’d wager Bayern had their people code this stuff themselves, like I do and others do

@pwawrzynow Yeah, I love the buzzword of AI to basically just mean a very basic model, even just regression 😂 Goes beyond football, businesses love the “AI” buzzword now, it’s the new Blockchain of 2015

@BeGriffis And in the classic sense, AI (or machine learning) has always been a part of football analytics. Take stupid xG models - AI. VAEP, EPV, OBV - all AI. Even what they're talking about in the article - player chemistry, I bet they use targeted models at the core, not a chatbot.

@coach_kevin_m Check out something like @twelve_football ! I mean, if someone is a volunteer coach in a youth setup there won't be data, but they cover loads of league and is accessible. I'd imagine their success will make other people want to make companies like them, targeted at coaches

I know this is an article about Bayern so what I am about to say will sound stupid ...... But ..... It's extremely sad that the trend of building solutions for professional football has tumbled into AI. Due to the abundance of data, the barrier to entry is really low, but there is a whole other side to football where expertise and AI can be combined to help coaches save time and money. Especially volunteer coaches. But the barrier to entry is high as you have to have experienced those challenges to help train the LLM on them. I'm still searching for someone else who is exploring this market (like I am!).

(Written in March 2026. Who knows if my thoughts will change in 2027 or 2028. For all I know my career vanishes in 2029)

The biggest clubs will probably never actually use AI to replace people. Smaller clubs might… but it would likely be that instead of *replacing* someone they just don’t hire someone in the first place. But those clubs probably wouldn’t have hired a data person at all anyway