If you happen to find yourself at a loose end this weekend, it might not be a bad idea to fire up the Apple TV app and check out some Major League Soccer action. All 14 of this weekend's games will be available to watch for free in English and Spanish, so you won't need an MLS Season Pass subscription.

Apple Vision Pro users will be able to check out MLS games on a virtual screen that appears to be up to 100 feet wide. The Apple TV app is also available on smart TVs, set-top boxes, game consoles and of course on Apple's own devices.

Among the games you'll be able to watch are Inter Miami's visit to DC United. Ticket prices for Miami games have gone through the roof since Lionel Messi, arguably the greatest player of all-time, joined the team last year. So, getting to watch the match for free is nothing to complain about. (Messi is likely to miss the game due to injury anyway, so you might be glad you didn't spend up to four figures on a ticket.) I'll most likely be watching my local team CF Montreal playing away at Chicago Fire, which takes place at the same time as the Miami match on Saturday afternoon.

EA is making a turn-based strategy game based on… soccer? That’s the bizarre premise behind the upcoming EA Sports FC Tactical, a mobile title heading to iOS and Android in early 2024. The company says the most peculiar installment in its decades-old franchise (formerly FIFA) results in “authentic football action like never before.”

As its description suggests, matches will be simulated, so you won’t directly control players’ actions like in traditional sports games. Instead, it focuses on in-game strategies like player stamina and power-play management. Playable modes include online-friendly matches and “intense online competitions” like Rank matches, Leagues, and Guilds. It sounds like a sports game for those who want 100 percent strategy and little or no player-controlled action.

Promotional screenshots show a one-on-one battle with assigned numerical skills for each player. They’re broken down into categories like dribbling, one-two, passing and shooting. The pictured player appears to have “skill move” power-up cards like combative chase shot, wild tap dribble and floating instep shot. It sounds like EA took core gameplay elements familiar from titles like Teamfight Tactics (and many others) and slapped a soccer skin onto it to attract fans of both genres.

EA

The game will have over 5,000 licensed players from “more than 10 top leagues,” including the Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga, Ligue 1, and Serie A. You can train players to upgrade their moves, unlock new traits as you progress and customize cosmetics like stadium designs, uniforms and balls.

“EA Sports FC Tactical embraces strategic gameplay to create an all-new football experience that immerses players in the World’s Game like never before,” said EA Sports senior vice president Nick Wlodyka. The game is available for pre-registration on the App Store and Google Play ahead of an expected January 18, 2024 launch.

Electronic Arts has pulled its FIFA games from digital storefronts such as Steam and console stores just as EA Sports FC 24 arrives. As noted by X (formerly Twitter) user MauroNL, none of EA’s FIFA titles are available for purchase on those storefronts anymore, including last year’s title, FIFA 23.

It’s still possible to play some of the games through EA Play, the publisher’s subscription service. You’ll still be able to find physical copies of the delisted games on consoles if you really want them and, if you’ve already purchased a FIFA game on a digital storefront, you’ll still be able to download it again.

But you’re out of luck if you hadn’t yet snapped up FIFA 23 or one of the earlier games on the likes of Steam. “At the request of the publisher, EA Sports FIFA 23 is unlisted on the Steam store and will not appear in search,” a notice on that game’s Steam page states.

It’s not yet clear exactly why EA has removed all these games from sale. Engadget has contacted the publisher for clarification. However, it seems likely that a licensing issue is at play.

Last year, EA and FIFA ended their long-running licensing partnership for the classic series of soccer sims. EA has rebranded the franchise as EA Sports FC. It will officially release the first entry on September 29, though the game has been in early access since last week.

The FIFA name will still appear on other games in the future, just (in all likelihood) not ones made by EA. "I can assure you that the only authentic, real game that has the FIFA name will be the best one available for gamers and football fans," FIFA president Gianni Infantino said last year, presumably with a straight face.

Lionel Messi has hit the ground running in Major League Soccer, and he's boosting Apple's bottom line in the process. Tickets for Inter Miami games have soared in price since Messi, the greatest soccer player of his generation and arguably the best of all time, joined the team several weeks ago. On top of that, subscriptions to Apple TV's MLS Season Pass have more than doubled since the former Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain star started plying his trade in the US in July.

That's according to Jorge Mas, one of Inter Miami's owners. Mas added that "Spanish language viewership on MLS Season Pass on Apple TV has surpassed over 50 percent for Messi matches and continues to rise," underscoring the player's popularity in the Spanish-speaking community. Apple CEO Tim Cook retweeted Mas' comments, indicating that Mas' claims are genuine (Apple's PR team has been drawing attention to the tweet as well).

The company hasn't disclosed how many subscribers the service has, though reports in July suggested the number was nearing 1 million before Messi's arrival. In any case, Apple is evidently pleased by Messi's impact on MLS Season Pass.

"For MLS, we could not be happier with how the partnership is going," Cook said on an Apple earnings call last week. "It's clearly in the early days, but we are beating our expectation in terms of subscribers, and the fact that Messi went to Inter Miami helped us out there a bit. And so we're very excited about it."

Apple, which dropped the price of the subscription from $99 to $49 for the second half of the season, is said to be paying $250 million a year for the MLS broadcast rights. Messi is reportedly taking a cut of revenue from new MLS Season Pass subscribers as part of his Inter Miami contract.

Messi has hit the ground running in Miami. He has scored seven goals and contributed three assists in four games, all of which Miami won. Before he joined the team, Miami was on an 11-game winless streak.

Although he's 36, an age when most soccer players are winding down their careers, Messi is still going strong. He led Argentina to the biggest prize in the game, the World Cup, last December and helped PSG win back-to-back French league championships before moving to the US. As a result, Messi is the overwhelming favorite to win the Ballon d'Or, arguably the most prestigious individual award in soccer, for a record-extending eighth time.

When Major League Soccer (MLS) announced plans to deploy AI-powered tools in its recruiting program starting at the tail end of this year, the eyebrows of skeptics were raised. The MLS will be working with London-based startup ai.io, and its ‘aiScout’ app to help the league discover amateur players around the world. This unprecedented collaboration is the first time the MLS will use artificial intelligence in its previously gatekept recruiting program, forcing many soccer enthusiasts and AI fans to reckon with the question: has artificial intelligence finally entered the mainstream in the professional soccer industry?

There is no doubt that professional sports have been primed for the potential impact of artificial intelligence. Innovations have the potential to transform the way we consume and analyze games from both an administrative and fan standpoint. For soccer specifically, there are opportunities for live game analytics, match outcome modeling, ball tracking, player recruitment, and even injury predicting — the opportunities are seemingly endless.

"I think that we're at the beginning of a tremendously sophisticated use of AI and advanced analytics to understand and predict human behaviors," Joel Shapiro, Northwestern University professor at the Kellogg School of Management said. Amid the wave, some experts believe the disruption of the professional soccer industry by AI is timely. It’s no secret that soccer is the most commonly played sport in the world. With 240 million registered players globally and billions of fans, FIFA is currently made up of 205 member associations with over 300,000 clubs, according to the Library of Congress. Just days into the 64-game tournament, FIFA officials said that the Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand had already broken attendance records.

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The need for more players and more talent taking on the big stage has kept college recruiting organizations like Sports Recruiting USA (SRUSA) busy. "We've got staff all over the world, predominantly in the US …everyone is always looking for players," Chris Cousins, the founder and head of operations at SRUSA said. Cousins said he is personally excited about the potential impact of artificial intelligence on his company and, in fact, he is not threatened by the implementation of predictive analysis impacting SRUSA's bottom line. "It probably will replace scouts," Cousins said, but at the same time, he said he believes the deployment of AI will make things more efficient. "It will basically streamline resources … which will save organizations money." Cousins shared that SRUSA has already started dabbling with AI, even if only in a modest way. It collaborated with a company called Veo that deploys drones that follow players and collect video for scouts to analyze later. 

Luis Cortell, senior recruiting coach for men’s soccer for NCSA College Recruiting, is a little less bullish, but still believes AI can be an asset. “Right now, soccer involves more of a feel for the player, and an understanding of the game, and there aren't any success metrics for college performance. While AI won’t fully fill that gap, there is an opportunity to help provide additional context.”

At the same time, people in the industry should be wary of idealizing AI as a godsend. "People expect AI to be amazing, to not make errors or if it makes errors, it makes errors rarely," Shapiro said. The fact is, predictive models will always make mistakes but both researchers and investors alike want to make sure that AI innovations in the space can make "fewer errors and less expensive errors" than the ones made by human beings.

But ultimately, Shapiro agrees with Cousins. He believes artificial intelligence will replace some payrolls for sure. "Might it replace talent scouts? Absolutely," he said. However, the ultimate decision-makers of how resources are being used will probably not be replaced by AI for some time. Contrary to both perspectives, Richard Felton-Thomas, director of sports sciences and chief operating officer at ai.io, said the technology being developed and used by the MLS will not replace scouts: “Scouts are super important to the mentality side, the personality side, you've still got to watch humans behave in their sporting arena to really talent ID them.”

Photo by Rob Hart

When the aiScout app launches in the coming weeks and is used by the MLS later this year, players will be able to take videos of themselves performing specific drills. Those will then be uploaded and linked to the scout version of the app, where talent recruiters working for specific teams can discover players based on whatever criteria they choose. For example, a scout could look for a goalie with a specific height and kick score. Think of it as a cross between a social media website and a search engine. Once a selection is made, a scout would determine whether or not they should go watch a player in person before making any final recruitment decisions, Felton-Thomas explained.

“The main AI actually happens less around the scoring and more around the video processing and the video tracking,” Felton-Thomas said. “Sport happens at 200 frames per second type speeds, right? So you can’t just have any old tracking model. It will not track the human fast enough.” The AI algorithms that have been developed to analyze video content can translate human movements into what makes up a player’s overall performance metrics and capabilities. 

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These ‘performance metrics’ can include biographical data, video highlights and club-specific benchmarks that can be made by recruiters. The company said in a statement that the platform’s AI technology is also able to score and compare the individual players’ “technical, athletic, cognitive and psychometric ability.” Additionally, the AI can generate feedback based on benchmarked ratings from the range of the club trials available. The FIFA Innovation Programme, the experimental arm of the association that tests and engages with new products that want to enter the professional soccer market, reported that ai.io’s AI-powered tools demonstrate a 97 percent accuracy level when compared to current gold standards.

Beyond the practical applications of AI-powered tools to streamline some processes at SRUSA, Cousins said that he recognizes a lot of the talent recruitment process is “very opinion based" and informed by potential bias. ai.io's talent recruitment app, because it is accessible to any player with a smartphone, broadens the MLS’ reach to disadvantaged populations. The larger goal is that aiScout will potentially disrupt bias from continuing to play a huge role in who gets what opportunity, or at least in the pre-screening process. Now, a scout can make the call to see a player in real life based on objective data related to how a player can perform physically. “The clubs are starting to realize we can't just rely on someone's opinion,” Felton-Thomas said. Of course, it's not an end-all-be-all for bias, considering preferential humans are the ones coding the AI. There is no complete expunging of favoritism from the equation, but it is one step in the right direction.

aiScout could open doors for players from remote or disadvantaged communities that don't necessarily have the means or opportunity to be seen by scouts in cups and tournaments. "Somebody super far in Alaska or Texas or whatever, who can't afford to play for a big club may never get seen by the right people but with this platform there, boom. They're going straight to the eyes of the right people," Cousins said about ai.io’s app.

The MLS wrote in a statement that ai.io's technology "eliminates barriers like cost, geography and time commitment that traditionally limit the accessibility of talent discovery programs." Felton-Thomas said it is more important to understand that ai.io will “democratize” the recruiting process for the MLS, ensuring physical skills are the most important metric when leagues and clubs are deciding where to invest their money. “What we're looking to do is give the clubs a higher confidence level when they're making these decisions on who to sign and who to watch.” By implementing the AI-powered app, recruitment timelines are also expected to be cut.

Silvia Ferrari, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Cornell and ​​Associate Dean for cross-campus engineering research, who runs the university's 'Laboratory for Intelligent Systems and Controls' said she couldn't agree more. AI has the potential to complement the expertise of recruiters while also helping, "eliminate the bias that sometimes coaches might have for a particular player or a particular team,” Ferrari said. Adjacent to this subject, algorithms developed in Ferrari's lab can accurately predict the in-game actions of volleyball players with more than 80% accuracy. Now the lab, which has been working on AI-powered predictive tools for the past three years, is collaborating with Cornell's Big Red men's ice hockey team to expand the project’s applications. Ferrari and her team have trained the algorithm to extract data from videos of games and then use that to make predictions about game stats and player performance when shown a new set of data.

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"I think what we're doing is, like, very easily applicable to soccer," Ferrari said. She said the only reason her lab is not focused on soccer is because the fields are so large that her team’s cameras could not always deliver easily analyzed recordings. There is also the struggle with predicting trajectory and tracking the players, she explained. However, she said in hockey, the challenges are similar enough, but because there are fewer players and the fields are smaller, so the variables are more manageable to tackle.

While the focus at Ferrari’s lab may not be soccer, she is convinced that research in the predictive AI space has made it “so much more promising to develop AI in sports and made the progress much faster." The algorithms developed by Ferrari's lab have been able to help teams analyze different strategies and therefore help coaches identify the strengths and weaknesses of particular players and opponents. “I think we're making very fast progress," Ferrari said.

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The next areas Ferrari plans to try to apply her lab’s research to include scuba diving and skydiving. However, Ferrari admits there are some technical barriers that need to be overcome by researchers. "The current challenge is real-time analytics," she said. A lot of that challenge is based on the fact that the technology is only capable of making predictions based on historical data. Meaning, if there is a shortage of historical data-there is a limit to what the tech can predict. Beyond technical limitations, Felton-Thomas said implementing AI in the real world is expensive and without the right partnerships, like the ones made with Intel and AWS, it would not have been possible fiscally.

Felton-Thomas said ai.io expects “tens of millions of users over the next couple of years.” And the company attributes that expected growth to partnerships with the right clubs, like Chelsea FC and Burnley FC in the UK, and the MLS in the United States. And while aiScout was initially designed for soccer, the company touts that its core functionalities can be adapted for use in other sports.

LISC lab

But despite ai.io’s projections for growth and all the buzz around AI, the technology is still a long way from being fully trusted. From a technology standpoint, Ferrari said “there's still a lot of work to be done” and a lot of the need for improvement is not just based on problems with feeding algorithms historical data. Predictive models need to be smart enough to adapt to the ever-changing variables in the current. On top of that, public skepticism of artificial intelligence is still rampant in the mainstream, let alone in soccer.

“If the sport changes a little bit, if the way in which players are used changes a little bit, if treatment plans for mid-career athletes change, whatever it is, all of a sudden, our predictions are less likely to be good,” Shapiro said. But he’s confident that the current models will prove valuable and informative. At least for a little while.

It’s a sporting spectacle that only happens once every four years. The FIFA Women’s World Cup returns this week as the United States Women’s National Team seeks a historic third-straight title. Will the US be able to repeat the magic it unlocked in 2015 and 2019? Is it finally “coming home” for the Lionesses of England? Will an unexpected contender shock the world? We’ve got all the information you need to know about when and how to stream the entire tournament, starting with the first matches early tomorrow morning Eastern Time (Thursday, July 20th).

When does the Women’s World Cup start?

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The 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup begins Thursday, July 20th at 3AM ET. Why so early? The tournament is being hosted by Australia and New Zealand, which will certainly put a strain on fans in the US wanting to watch the action live. As is tradition, the host plays on the first day and that means there will be two games instead of the typical one since there are two hosts. New Zealand plays Norway first and Australia follows against Ireland at 6AM ET. The US Women’s National Team kicks off its group play schedule Friday, July 21st at 9PM ET versus Vietnam and England steps on the pitch for the first time Saturday, July 22nd with Haiti at 5:30AM ET.

The group stage consists of three matches for each team and continues through Thursday, August 3rd. The Round of 16 begins Saturday, August 5th and ends on Tuesday, August 8th. Quarterfinal matches are scheduled for Thursday through Saturday, August 10th-12th with the two semi-final matches taking place on Tuesday and Wednesday, August 15th and 16th. The third-place game is Saturday, August 19th while the championship final is Sunday, August 20th.

How to stream the 2023 Women’s World Cup

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Fox Sports is the broadcaster for the Women’s World Cup in the US and all games will air on either FOX or FS1. The company says the entire tournament will be available for streaming on FOXSports.com and the FOX Sports App, but you’ll need to sign in with your TV provider to watch in those places. Full replays will be available in those two spots as well, which will come in handy if you plan to skip a 3:30AM ET kickoff.

Any live television streaming service that carries FOX networks – like Hulu, Sling or YouTube TV – will also show all of the games as they happen. Most of those services offer cloud-based DVR, so you can record any games you want to sleep through.

Unlike what Turner does for select games of March Madness, there’s no free streaming option for any of the scheduled matches during the Women’s World Cup. In order to watch some of the games without paying, you’ll need an old-fashioned antenna that picks up the main FOX channel in your area. For US fans, all of the United States’ group-stage matches are scheduled to air on FOX and all of the knockout rounds (quarterfinals through the final) will be there as well. Of course, taking this route means you’ll miss a lot of the action that will be broadcast on FS1 (35 games).

For fans in the UK, the BBC is the broadcaster for the Women’s World Cup. It plans to show 33 live games across BBC TV and iPlayer with audio coverage for some matches on BBC Radio 5 Live and BBC Sounds. In terms of streaming, all of those games will be available live on iPlayer and the BBC Sport website and app. The BBC will offer highlights of all 64 matches in the tournament which will be available to watch when each one concludes. The other 31 games will be shown on ITV.

Sports Interactive said back in 2021 that it would bring women's soccer to Football Manager, its long-running simulation franchise. Now, we have a clearer idea of when that will happen. In a blog post that looks at the franchise's future, SI says it will introduce women's teams in Football Manager 2025, which is next year's edition.

The studio initially said it would take a while to bring women's soccer into the fold as it wanted to offer the same level of depth that it does for the men's game. Football Manager has an enormous database of tens of thousands of players, each with individual stats, bios, injury history and so on. Not only that, SI had to account for changes to the attribute systems, gender considerations for translations and different league rules when it comes to women's football.

"The facts are that we’ve made really good progress in many areas, including research, the match engine and translation," SI studio manager Miles Jacobson wrote. "But there are other areas that haven’t made enough advancements, a lot of which are legal issues. The women's game deserves to be the best it possibly can be when it is released."

Alongside the addition of women's teams, Football Manager 2025 will herald a fundamental shift for the series as SI is moving to the Unity game engine. Jacobson says this will "give us a lot more power graphically, across all formats, alongside powerful user interface tools." There will be an entirely new UI and "a significantly better looking matchday experience," while animations are making "a big jump" forward. It'll take a little longer to transition to Unity on mobile, however.

A project to overhaul the underlying tech of Football Manager has been in the works for several years. The initial aim was to revamp the series with Football Manager 2022, but the COVID-19 pandemic forced SI to take a step back and focus on making sure it could release a new version each year.

Elsewhere, Jacobson acknowledged that while FM23 has reached more than 5 million players (by far the most in the series' history after SI introduced Apple Arcade and PS5 versions), some of its features weren't up to scratch. Some of those who play each year's edition may have also been disappointed by having "fewer new features than normal," the studio head noted.

However, SI has expanded its team and it's on track to fully implement FM24's new features faster than usual, leaving more time for polish and bug fixes. One of those updates is well overdue: the option to transfer your progress from FM23 and continue where you left off while benefiting from FM24's upgrades. Even though SI will move to a new game engine next year, the studio plans to let players take their FM24 saves into FM25 as well.

"This is especially good for those playing via Game Pass and Apple Arcade who, by subscribing to those platforms, would lose access to their career shortly after the new game is released," Jacobson wrote. "This has been unavoidable to date due to the expiry of our licenses which require us to remove titles from platforms upon conclusion. We’re still working out the finer details with the platform holders, but the idea is that you’ll be able to seamlessly move from FM23 to FM24 on those platforms and continue your save or start a new one."

Game developer Panic, the studio behind Firewatch and Untitled Goose Game, is dropping a unique soccer title on PS5 next year. It’s called Despelote and is described as a “beautiful slice-of-life adventure” about childhood and the world’s favorite sport. The title’s set in Ecuador in 2001, which was when the country had its first qualifying run for the World Cup.

Gameplay involves exploring the city of Quito, playing soccer and engaging in “playful, funny interactions” with various townspeople. It boasts a first person perspective and a highly unique art style that merges grainy photo realism with flourishes of animation. Not sure what that means? There’s a teaser trailer.

Panic says the game was inspired by lead co-creator Julián Cordero’s childhood and it boasts full voice acting in Spanish with the option for localized subtitles. Much of the dialogue was actually captured in real life on the streets of Ecuador to give it a bit more flavor. The same goes for the background ambient noise.

It’s worth noting that this is a narrative title first and a soccer game second, so don’t expect a full-on sim like FIFA. There looks to be plenty of opportunities to kick things, pass things and dribble, however, as you explore the town, “getting caught up in mischief and soaking in the local culture.”

Despelote first appeared on the scene in 2021 at that year’s Summer Games Fest, but there wasn’t an official publisher or release platform back then. As for Panic, the company’s been busy meeting the demands of PlayDate portable console owners in addition to publishing nifty indie titles.

Apple has begun offering a free one-month trial for MLS Season Pass. The promotion is available in every country where you can sign up for the streaming package, and both new and returning monthly subscribers can take advantage. Apple says the offer will remain available through the end of October, meaning it roughly overlaps with what’s left of the MLS season. After the trial is over, your subscription will automatically renew, unless you cancel it beforehand. MLS Season Pass costs $15 per month. If you’re an Apple TV customer, you’ll get a discounted rate of $13 per month.

It’s worth noting the Apple TV app isn’t limited to Apple devices. You can also install it on Roku devices, PlayStation and Xbox consoles, Chromecast, Amazon Fire devices, Android TV, cable streaming boxes (including those from Comcast and Verizon) and smart TVs from Samsung, Vizio, Sony, LG and Panasonic. 

The National Women’s Soccer League is heading to FIFA 23. Electronic Arts announced on Monday that all 12 NWSL teams would be available to play within the game starting March 15th, thanks to a licensing partnership the company recently signed with the league and NWSL Players Association. The 12 teams of the NWSL, and all the female athletes who play on their rosters, will also be part of the franchise moving forward, including when it rebrands to EA Sports FC later this year.

FIFA 23 launched with all 24 teams from the Women’s Super League and Division 1 in the UK and France. The game also marked the first time EA featured a female player on the cover, with Chelsea’s Sam Kerr appearing on the Ulitmate Edition. All told, the series has come a long way since FIFA 16, when EA first added pro female players.

Come March 15th, all 12 NWSL teams will be available to play within FIFA 23’s Kick-Off game modes. They will also be available in the game’s Tournament Mode, as well as Online Seasons and Friendlies. If both teams are from the NWSL, EA says players will see an “authentic” match broadcast experience. Separately, the company is adding the option to play through the UEFA Women’s Champions League (UWCL) in Kick-Off and Tournament game modes. It’s also adding four new European clubs, including Juventus and Real Madrid, to round out the UWCL experience.

“The athletes that call the NWSL home are some of the best in the world and we’re excited for the opportunity to further showcase their talent through this unique gaming experience,” said NWSL Commissioner Jessica Berman. “We can’t wait for fans to begin playing and we look forward to continuing this celebration of the players and the league when we kick off our 11th season on March 25.”

FIFA 23 is available on PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and PC.