The Science of Football: Inside the 2026 World Cup

Episode 381

Advances in sports science, data analysis and AI are having a huge impact on the way football is played. With England rated highly in this year’s World Cup, and teams such as Paraguay causing upsets - how will science help give teams an edge?

In the past there was very little data available to help assess player performance - and diet and training were much more rudimentary. But now we can analyse information in an incredibly sophisticated way, which is changing what players can achieve on the pitch.

In this special World Cup episode recorded at the Royal Society in London, we explore the emerging role of data and AI in football, the neuroscience of penalty shootouts, the impact of extreme heat on player performance, differences between the men’s and women’s game - and much more.

Rowan Hooper is joined by a panel of expert guests, including:

Dr Charlotte Cowie, Chief Medical Officer of the British Olympic Association

Dr Ian Graham, Founder of sports advisory business Ludonautics

Holly Bridge, Professor of Neuroscience at University of Oxford

To read more about these stories, visit https://www.newscientist.com/

Image credit: Ank Kumar, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0 via Wikimedia Commons 

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