Generative AI has reached the professional soccer field.
Laura Harvey, head coach of Seattle Reign FC, stated this week that ChatGPT helped her develop a new defensive strategy.
Speaking on the Soccerish Podcast, Harvey indicated she was curious whether ChatGPT could answer questions about soccer. So she began prompting OpenAI’s chatbot with questions about her team.
At first, she asked broad questions like, “what is Seattle Reign’s identity?” She didn’t particularly appreciate the answer.
But then she asked: “What formation should you play to beat NWSL teams?”
It then listed every team in the women’s soccer professional league, with a suggested formation. And for two of the teams, it suggested “back-five,” a defensive setup using five players in the backline.
Harvey stated she wasn’t highly familiar with the strategy and had not used it as a coach.
She presented the AI suggestion to her staff and conducted a thorough analysis of the potential change.
“We liked it,” Harvey stated. “And it worked, we won the game.”
Harvey, a three-time NWSL Coach of the Year, didn’t reveal the opponent but indicated they were “really good.” Now the team uses the formation as an option during matches. The Reign have improved since last season and are ranked fourth in the NWSL heading into the playoffs.
It represents a fascinating example of using AI as a tactical consultant, combining human expertise and intuition with machine suggestions.
“It didn’t tell you how to play it, what to do in it or any of that stuff,” Harvey stated on the podcast. “But it was like, ‘This is what we would say to do.’ And I was like, ‘Hmm, interesting.’ And that was what spurred me to look into it. So then I really looked into it.”
Across industries, professionals are treating tools such as ChatGPT as sounding boards, running ideas by them, exploring scenarios, or pressure-testing strategies before making decisions.
OpenAI’s own research this year found that people increasingly rely on ChatGPT “as an advisor rather than only for task completion.”
“ChatGPT likely improves worker output by providing decision support, which is especially important in knowledge-intensive jobs where productivity is increasing in the quality of decision-making,” according to the research.
The ChatGPT tactical consultation representing groundbreaking application of generative AI in professional sports, with Harvey’s willingness to seek strategic advice from an artificial intelligence system demonstrating how coaches increasingly view AI tools as legitimate sources of innovation supplementing traditional film study, statistical analysis, and coaching intuition.
The Seattle Reign FC context providing high-stakes testing environment, with a professional women’s soccer team competing in the National Women’s Soccer League creating real-world validation of AI recommendations where incorrect suggestions result in losses, injuries, or playoff elimination making Harvey’s trust in ChatGPT’s formation advice particularly noteworthy.
Laura Harvey’s three-time NWSL Coach of the Year credentials establishing her expertise, with the accolades demonstrating she ranks among women’s soccer’s most accomplished tacticians making her openness to AI consultation more significant than if a struggling inexperienced coach sought artificial assistance out of desperation.
The initial broad “what is Seattle Reign’s identity?” question testing ChatGPT’s knowledge, with Harvey’s dissatisfaction with that response demonstrating appropriate skepticism where she didn’t blindly accept AI outputs but instead critically evaluated answers recognizing the chatbot’s limitations on subjective team culture questions.
The refined “What formation should you play to beat NWSL teams?” prompt demonstrating effective AI interaction, with Harvey’s more specific tactical question generating useful concrete recommendations rather than vague generalities showing that prompt engineering skill determines whether AI tools provide valuable insights or useless platitudes.
The comprehensive response listing every NWSL team with suggested formations indicating ChatGPT accessed substantial soccer tactical knowledge, with the detailed opponent-specific recommendations suggesting the AI model has ingested coaching manuals, tactical analyses, and strategic discussions enabling it to generate plausible formation suggestions.
The back-five recommendation for two specific opponents representing unconventional tactical advice, with the five-defender formation relatively rare in modern soccer where most teams use four-back systems making ChatGPT’s suggestion genuinely novel rather than obvious conventional wisdom any experienced coach would already know.
Harvey’s unfamiliarity with back-five strategy highlighting AI’s potential to introduce concepts outside practitioners’ expertise, with the formation falling outside her coaching repertoire demonstrating how AI tools can expose professionals to valid approaches they haven’t explored either through gaps in their training or cognitive biases favoring familiar tactics.
The staff presentation and deep-dive analysis demonstrating responsible AI adoption, with Harvey not blindly implementing ChatGPT’s suggestion but instead thoroughly vetting the recommendation with her coaching staff conducting tactical research before field deployment showing proper integration of AI insights within human decision-making frameworks.
The “we liked it” and “it worked, we won the game” outcome validating the AI recommendation, with the competitive victory providing tangible evidence that ChatGPT’s tactical suggestion had merit though attributing causation to any single factor in complex team sports requires acknowledging that execution, opponent weaknesses, and luck also contribute to results.
The undisclosed “really good” opponent creating intrigue, with Harvey’s refusal to identify the team protecting competitive advantages while the quality characterization suggests the victory came against strong opposition rather than weak team where any formation might succeed making the result more impressive.
The formation becoming ongoing tactical option indicating sustained adoption, with the Reign incorporating back-five into their strategic repertoire rather than treating it as one-time experiment showing the AI suggestion provided lasting value beyond the initial implementation.
The fourth-place NWSL ranking heading into playoffs demonstrating team success, with the improved standing compared to last season potentially reflecting multiple factors including player development, roster changes, and tactical innovations like the ChatGPT-inspired formation though isolating AI’s specific contribution proves impossible.
The “tactical consultant” characterization positioning AI as collaborative partner, with the framing emphasizing that ChatGPT supplemented rather than replaced Harvey’s expertise where human judgment remained central to strategy development and the AI simply introduced possibilities for human evaluation.
The combination of “human expertise and intuition with machine suggestions” articulating ideal human-AI collaboration, with Harvey’s approach demonstrating how professionals can leverage AI capabilities while maintaining critical oversight rather than either dismissing AI entirely or surrendering decision-making authority to algorithms.
The clarification that ChatGPT “didn’t tell you how to play it” acknowledging AI limitations, with the observation that the chatbot provided strategic direction without implementation details showing current AI excels at high-level pattern recognition and recommendation but lacks the nuanced tactical knowledge explaining specific positioning, transition movements, and situational adjustments that experienced coaches provide.
The “this is what we would say to do” phrasing prompting Harvey’s investigation demonstrating how AI suggestions spark human creativity, with the recommendation serving as catalyst for deeper research where Harvey explored formation theory, studied opponent tendencies, and developed implementation plans that ChatGPT couldn’t provide.
The cross-industry “sounding board” usage pattern indicating widespread professional AI adoption, with Harvey’s experience mirroring how executives, lawyers, doctors, and other knowledge workers use ChatGPT to explore ideas, identify blind spots, and challenge assumptions before making consequential decisions.
The “advisor rather than only for task completion” research finding reflecting AI’s evolution, with OpenAI’s data showing users increasingly treat ChatGPT as consultative partner for strategic thinking rather than merely automating routine work like writing emails or summarizing documents.
The “decision support” improvement mechanism explaining AI value, with the research indicating that ChatGPT enhances outcomes not primarily through task automation but by improving decision quality through expanded perspectives, identified alternatives, and pressure-tested reasoning.
The “knowledge-intensive jobs” emphasis highlighting where AI provides greatest value, with the observation that fields requiring complex judgment like coaching, medicine, law, and business strategy benefit most from AI consultation compared to routine procedural work where automation rather than advisory functions dominate.
The Seattle sports technology context where Seahawks, Mariners, Kraken, and Sounders all employ analytics teams, with the Reign’s AI experimentation continuing the region’s tradition of embracing data-driven approaches though using generative AI for tactical suggestions represents novel application beyond traditional statistical analysis.
The women’s soccer professional development where NWSL teams often operate with smaller budgets and staffs than men’s leagues, with resource constraints potentially making AI tools particularly valuable for coaches lacking extensive analyst support who can leverage ChatGPT as virtual assistant providing strategic insights that larger organizations obtain through human personnel.
