The 2026 World Cup has already changed football. Permanently. For many reasons, but above all because technology is having a massive impact on the game, on the flow of matches, even on the work – difficult, beautiful – of the referees called up for the final phase in the United States, Canada and Mexico. The main protagonist of this revolution is artificial intelligence: for the World Cup, Lenovo – Official Technology Partner of FIFA – has launched three technologies that, starting from AI, make the viewing experience more immersive, more accessible, more complete. Tactical reading and refereeing sit inside the same shift, though not always in step with each other.
The closest one, because it is visible in every match, is the new Ref Cam, a miniature camera now part of the referee’s equipment that allows fans to see the game from the referee’s point of view. A striking innovation. AI stabilises the image – vibrations, even in the fastest sequences, reduced by up to 50% – and sharpens the footage. Television audiences inside the frame, sometimes too close for comfort. In tactical analysis, Lenovo’s main bet is called FIFA AI Pro. A platform used by analysts from all national teams at the World Cup, producing numbers, graphs, video, 3D reconstructions of what happens on the pitch. It starts from prompts, usually simple. The rest is already there, already played.
An analyst asks. The system returns statistics, clips, visual breakdowns. Not always in the order you expect. A match reassembled through queries, or something that resembles it enough. The shift is elsewhere. Accessibility. FIFA AI Pro available to all 48 qualified national teams, including federations with smaller structures, smaller staffs. Same data layer, identical access. For some, familiar ground. For others, the first time anything like this arrives in the room.
According to Alvaro Pérez Rivero, Senior Product Manager (Football AI Pro), Services & Solutions Group at Lenovo, “the fact that FIFA has given us access to its official data brings a real democratisation of advanced tactical analysis: at the World Cup some teams will arrive with an army of analysts, of coaches, while others will have smaller staffs. Thanks to this new tool, everyone will have exactly the same possibilities.” Football AI Pro does not replace staff. It sits with them. On the bench, in the tunnel, sometimes open during play, sometimes not. Pérez Rivero again: “it has been designed starting from a common, universal football language, based on the most used terms within FIFA.”
Refereeing follows the same direction. For the World Cup, through its system, Lenovo has scanned the bodies of all players called up for the final tournament and uses their 3D models in VAR reconstructions and semi-automated offside decisions. AI in the scanning phase. Twenty-eight terminals set up, then moved across training camps in the USA, Canada and Mexico. Bodies translated into usable form, down to small asymmetries, nothing symbolic about it. During matches, officials see images in which the reproduction of Lamine Yamal has the face, shoulders, arms and legs of Lamine Yamal. The same logic applied across the tournament. No hierarchy in the modelling. Just coverage.
Valerio Rizzo, project lead and AI Senior Manager & Solution Architect at Lenovo, explained that “in this way we ensure the best possible experience for referees, fans, and the players themselves. Who are increasingly attentive to their own image, by the way. But the possibilities are truly endless: what stops us, for example, from imagining a simulated match played by hyper-realistic players built with AI, perhaps even managed by AI?” It may still be early for that. Or simply not the direction yet. What is already here is a football where decisions – coaches, referees – move with artificial intelligence alongside them. Not replacing, not interpreting in any strong sense. Just present, in the system, in the background of decisions as they are made.
That is enough. Football has already changed. Forever.