Seattle head coach Laura Harvey received an unexpected response when she asked ChatGPT for tactical advice this season but the chatbot’s suggestion she switch to a back five against some National Women’s Soccer League opponents looks to have paid off.
The former Arsenal coach said she first used OpenAI’s tool for tactical analysis during the close season, testing prompts that progressed from broad strategy to opponent-specific formation recommendations.
“And then I put in, ‘What formation should you play to beat NWSL teams?’” Reign’s Harvey said on the ‘Soccerish Podcast’ in an interview published on Thursday. “And it spurted out every team in the league and what formation you should play.
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“And for two teams, it went, ‘You should play a back five.’ So I did. No joke, that’s why I did it. It was earlier in the season. And I said to the coaching staff, ‘I’m not joking, this is what I did.’ And they were like, ‘Huh, interesting.’”
Harvey said she had never previously gone with a back five system, which is typically a more defensive formation featuring three centre backs flanked by two wing backs.
She said they used the suggestion as a starting point and looked into how Seattle could adapt to playing five defenders.
“We researched it. We did a deep dive on it. We thought about how we could play it, and we went for it, and we liked it,” she added. “It worked. We won the game.”
After finishing second from bottom last season, Seattle are currently fourth in the NWSL standings heading into the final weekend of the regular season, in position for a playoff berth.
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