England have lost seven of their previous eleven penalty shootouts in major tournaments, at one point losing five of them in a row. There has been a lot of heartbreak through the saga of England’s penalty shootout history, and while they have started to turn the corner by winning three of their last four, the FA has looked to technology to try and give the Three Lions a further boost in case they encounter one at the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

An Increasing AI Influence

Football is one of the world’s most bet-on sports. If you have a look at football bets on Legalbet.UK, an expert service which rates and compares betting sites, their odds and offers, you’ll see that quotes are available for competitions and leagues from around the world. And come the 2026 World Cup, interest in football will spike further.

It’s strange to think that at the time of the last World Cup in 2022, AI wasn’t anywhere near being as publicly available as it is today. Now it’s heavily integred into everything we do, from acting as a personal assistant on a smartphone to designing websites, writing code, helping with homework, and even helping bettors analyse data, make predictions and put together betting strategies. It will also be the neural network for England’s penalty takers.

Penalty Advantage

Small margins count for a lot in sports, and according to Rhys Long, the FA’s head of performance insights and analysis, the coaching team has shifted to AI-generated automated profiling. This is understandable as AI can compress years of work into a short amount of time, allowing that data to then be passed onto the players.

England’s AI penalty coach will take historical data of opposition players to help the Three Lions’ goalkeepers anticipate where the ball is likely to go, raising the probability of saving it. For the players that step up for England in a shootout, AI will look at each player’s strengths from the spot, combine that with the weakness of an opposing goalkeeper, and put it all together to create the most likely positive outcome.

Could AI Replace Coaches?

This use of AI by the England coaching team raises an interesting question about whether an AI algorithm could, at some point, replace human coaches. Coaching staff use AI for individual training plans and real-time tactical adjustments already, along with player load management. So it’s already being heavily used behind the scenes.

The question of AI replacing human coaches boils down to how much a human coach will interpret and use what the neural network is telling it to do. Would any club simply hand every team decision over to technology to create an automated dugout, leaving a human coach as nothing more than a human interface, passing on the instructions?

AI does a fantastic job of analysing millions of data points to suggest the best tactics and formations, and may spot a 2% drop in the form of a star striker. But would a head coach drop that star striker if AI suggests it’s the best course of action?

Probably not, and this leads to the important aspect of emotional intelligence, because only a human coach can understand emotions and tension in the dressing room, and know when to scold, praise, or uplift their squad.

England’s 2026 Campaign

England will have an AI coach in the camp at the World Cup, which may influence decisions come any penalty shoot-out they encounter, but it will remain behind the scenes and nothing more than a technological aid. AI can deliver pinpoint data accuracy and is superb at rapid pattern recognition, but it’s not a leader, not a source of inspiration on the sidelines.