TacticGen: Grounding Adaptable and Scalable Generation of Football Tactics

TacticGen reframes football analytics from predicting what may happen to generating what should happen. It models coordinated player and ball movements with a multi-agent diffusion transformer, then guides generation toward tactical objectives expressed as rules, natural language, or learned value functions.

Sheng Xu1 Guiliang Liu1† Tarak Kharrat2 Yudong Luo1 Mohamed Aloulou2
Javier López Peña2 Konstantin Sofeikov2 Adam Reid2 Steven Spencer3 Joe Carnall3
Ian McHale4 Oliver Schulte5 Hongyuan Zha1 Wei-Shi Zheng6

1 The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen

2 Real Analytics

3 Birmingham City Football Club

4 University of Liverpool

5 Simon Fraser University

6 Sun Yat-sen University

Corresponding author.

3.3M+ annotated events for training
100M real tracking frames
1432 matches from 2018-2025
80% of experts favored TacticGen

Highlights

Why this paper matters

TacticGen is positioned as a foundation-oriented model for football tactical design: accurate enough to model realistic movement, adaptable enough to respond to different objectives, and scalable enough to improve with larger models and more data.

01

From prediction to generation

The paper reframes football analytics from forecasting likely play evolution to generating coordinated tactical alternatives.

02

Multi-agent football modeling

TacticGen jointly models the ball and 22 players, explicitly handling cooperative and competitive interactions.

03

Zero-shot flexible tactical guidance

During inference, a single trained generator can be steered by rule functions, natural language prompts, or learned value models.

04

Validated with practitioners

Case studies with football experts show generated tactics are hard to distinguish from real play and tactically valuable.

Motivation

Why football tactics should be generated, not only predicted

This figure sets up the problem shift behind TacticGen: instead of only forecasting how play may unfold, the system should also produce coordinated tactical alternatives that align with a coach's intent.

TacticGen motivation figure showing the shift from prediction to tactical generation
Motivation Figure

From descriptive football analytics to tactical decision support

The motivation figure introduces the paper's core question: how to move from passive trajectory prediction toward controllable generation that can assist tactical planning.

Framework

The TacticGen pipeline

After the method overview, this figure gives a cleaner system-level view of how context encoding, diffusion generation, and tactical guidance fit together inside the complete framework.

TacticGen framework figure showing the pipeline, conditioning inputs, and guidance modules
Framework Figure

Conditioning, generation, and guidance in one model stack

The framework figure ties the paper together by showing how event context, player-ball history, and guidance signals are fused into a unified generation pipeline for tactical control.

Method

A controllable diffusion framework for football tactics

TacticGen builds on diffusion transformers and adapts them to football with explicit agent interaction modeling, context-aware conditioning, and guidance at sampling time.

Architecture

The core generation pipeline

These three components define the base system: a multi-agent denoising backbone, a context encoder that summarizes match state, and an inference-time objective module that makes the generator steerable.

Backbone

DiT Core

Multi-agent Diffusion Transformer

TacticGen extends DiT into a multi-agent setting so that noisy future trajectories can be denoised while preserving team-level coordination and opponent response.

Joint denoising across players and ball keeps team structure coherent.

Context

Temporal Fusion

Self-attentive context encoding

Past trajectories, ball history, event type, goal difference, and timestamps are fused into context embeddings through MLP-based encoding, self-attention, and adaptive conditioning.

Rich match context is compressed into controllable conditioning signals.

Guidance

Inference Control

Objective-driven generation

Classifier guidance steers samples at inference time, letting one pretrained generator adapt to tactical goals without retraining.

One generator, multiple tactical objectives, no extra training pass required.

On top of the shared architecture, TacticGen exposes multiple control interfaces so the same pretrained model can respond to different tactical design goals.

Guidance

Three ways to steer tactical generation

The guidance layer supports explicit football rules, coach-friendly language prompts, and learned value signals, covering both interpretable control and performance-oriented optimization.

01 Rules guidance icon

Rule-based guidance

Differentiable tactical rules encode concepts like support width, zone occupation, or pitch control value.

Best for explicit tactical priors and interpretable control.

02 Language guidance icon

Language-based guidance

Natural language instructions are turned into executable guidance functions, enabling high-level tactical prompting.

Best for coach-friendly prompts and rapid what-if iteration.

03 Value guidance icon

Value-based guidance

A learned value model injects long-term utility into generation, guiding trajectories toward strategically stronger outcomes.

Best for optimizing downstream tactical quality over longer horizons.

The same architecture is deployed in two practical operating modes, letting TacticGen cover both realistic trajectory prediction and more deliberate tactical design workflows.

Operating Modes

Two practical operating modes

Both modes share the same football-native generator, but differ in how much future ball information is available at inference time and, as a result, what kind of coaching workflow they support best.

TacticGen-P Predictive

Short-context trajectory prediction

Predicts future player and ball trajectories from a short observed context window, making it a natural fit for realistic generation.

  • Uses recent match context without assuming the future ball path is known.
  • Best suited to realistic future trajectory prediction and model benchmarking.
TacticGen-C Conditional

Ball-conditioned tactical generation

Conditions on a full ball trajectory so the model can coordinate player movement around an anticipated ball path.

  • Provides stronger control when analysts or coaches already have a target ball path in mind.
  • Best suited to tactical planning, design exploration, and controlled what-if generation.

Dataset

Large-scale football dataset with aligned event and tracking data

The dataset combines analyst-annotated event logs and full-pitch optical tracking, then standardizes them into event-centric training examples with consistent spatial coordinates, temporal context, and future trajectory targets.

League coverage

1,432 matches across 2018-2025

The dataset spans multiple top-tier competitions, led by the EFL Championship and Premier League.

EFL Championship 829
Premier League 489
MLS, Eredivisie, and others 114
Event data Tracking data Aligned sequences

From raw match feeds to aligned multi-agent decision points

Each sample starts from two synchronized sources: Opta-style play-by-play annotations for on-ball actions, and optical tracking for the ball plus all players. An adapted Needleman-Wunsch alignment process links the two streams, producing structured football events that can directly condition trajectory generation.

25 Hz to 10 Hz tracking is down-sampled for stable sequence modeling
105 x 68 m all positions are mapped onto one standardized pitch
Attack to the right coordinates are flipped accordingly so tactical direction is consistent
Matches 1,432

Top-tier matches used to build the aligned dataset.

Events 3,374,599

Annotated football events after alignment.

Frames 97,760,895

Processed timesteps containing agent positions.

Sequence Setup 10 + 54

10 context frames followed by 54 subsequent frames.

Data schema

What one training example contains

Every event stores match metadata, tactical context, agent states, and the future trajectory target needed for training.

01

Metadata

Game ID, event ID, episode ID, timestamps, and match bookkeeping.

02

Match state

Goal difference, possession length, event outcome, and ball-control status.

03

Action labels

30 unified action types plus the next-event ball destination.

04

Team indicators

Home vs. away, attacking vs. defending, and episode termination flags.

05

Context tensors

Past agent positions and features over the fixed context window.

06

Trajectory tensors

Variable-length future player trajectories with aligned agent features.

Event Visualizer

Explore the football event data distribution

Event type: Attacking Defending Neutral

Bar heights are proportional to log10(count + 1).

Trajectory Visualizer

Inspect spatial density on the normalized pitch

The heatmap is built from 1,692,800 coordinates from a single game, while the overlay dots show a smaller sampled subset for readability.

Low density High density

Results

Accurate, adaptable, and scalable

On the paper's large-scale football dataset, TacticGen improves prediction quality over prior baselines and then uses the same modeling foundation to support controllable tactical generation.

Trajectory Error 0.29 Best ADE reported for TacticGen
Final Position 0.52 Best FDE reported for TacticGen
Joint Accuracy 0.92 Best joint FDE in the comparison table
Miss Rate 10.66% Best joint miss rate in the comparison table
Scaling

Scaling behavior

From 1.74M to 311.50M parameters, up to 600K training steps, and up to 78M training examples, TacticGen shows consistent scaling gains across model size, training time, and data scale.

Scaling curves showing Joint ADE and Joint FDE improving with more training steps across model sizes from S to XXL.
Model Scale Scaling from 1.74M to 311.50M parameters consistently lowers error.
Data Scale Performance continues to improve as data grows, up to full 78M examples.
Human Study

Expert validation

In case studies with five experts, generated trajectories achieved a realism F1 of 0.50 ± 0.07, and guided TacticGen samples received a utility score of 0.81 ± 0.04.

Case study plots showing expert utility ratings concentrated near high scores and rating distributions across five raters.
Realism Experts achieved an average realism classification F1 of 0.50 ± 0.07.
Preference Guided TacticGen was preferred over ground truth in 20 of 25 pairs.

Videos

Main Paper Videos

These clips show how TacticGen compares with real trajectories and how generation changes under different tactical objectives, including rule guidance, pitch-control guidance, language prompts, and value-based guidance.

Ground-Truth Event

Start With the Reference Play

All videos below are based on the same Pass event. The interactive view here shows the ground-truth play first, so viewers can get familiar with the player layout, ball location, and overall structure before comparing generated tactics.

Red markers indicate the attacking team, blue markers indicate the defending team, and green indicates the ball.

Main Paper Videos

Conditional Prediction
Rule Guidance
Pitch Control Guidance
Pitch Control Map
Language Prompt
Value Guidance
Conditional Prediction

TacticGen-C Prediction

This clip shows conditional trajectory prediction for a pass event, where player movement is generated while following the observed ball trajectory.

Human Evaluation

Interactive Expert Evaluation

We study TacticGen with two complementary human-facing tasks: a Realism Test that asks whether a clip looks generated or realistic, and a Utility Preference task that asks which clip demonstrates better tactical value. The clips and pairs shown on this webpage are only showcase examples, not the full set of human evaluation samples.

Realism Test

Can You Tell Generated Plays From Real Ones?

We added 10 expert case-study clips on realism. Watch each play, decide whether it looks generated or realistic, and the interface will reveal the correct answer immediately after your choice.

Single Task Across All 10 Clips

Are the post-event player movements generated or realistic?

Judge only the post-event player trajectories. The ball trajectory is always real. Use the buttons or swipe horizontally to move through the clips.

Utility Preference

Which Clip Shows Better Tactical Utility?

These expert case studies compare a Generated clip against a Realistic clip. For each pair, decide whether the left clip, the right clip, or equal shows better utility.

Single Task Across All 6 Pairs

Which side demonstrates better tactical utility?

Judge utility for the highlighted team only. Realism should be a least consideration. You can choose Left, Right, or Equal, then compare your choice with the experts.

Paper

Paper and Citation

Authors

Author Biographies

Portrait of Sheng Xu

Ph.D. Student

Sheng Xu

  • Ph.D., CUHK-SZ, ongoing
  • B.S., Northwestern Polytechnical University, 2023

Sheng Xu is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree with the School of Data Science, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen. He received the B.S. degree in computer science and technology from Northwestern Polytechnical University in 2023. His research interests include reinforcement learning, embodied AI, and sports analytics. His work has been published in international venues including ICLR, ICML, NeurIPS, and TMLR. He is also a core developer of EmbodiChain, a GPU-accelerated and modular platform for embodied intelligence. He has served as a reviewer for conferences and journals, including ICLR, ICML, NeurIPS, TMLR, ECCV, AAAI, and AISTATS.

Portrait of Guiliang Liu

Assistant Professor

Guiliang Liu

  • Ph.D., Simon Fraser University, 2020
  • B.S., South China University of Technology, 2016

Guiliang Liu is currently working as an Assistant Professor at the School of Data Science at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen. He obtained his undergraduate degree from South China University of Technology. He then earned his Ph.D. in computer science from Simon Fraser University in Canada and completed postdoctoral research at the University of Waterloo and the Vector Institute in Canada. His research primarily focuses on reinforcement learning and embodied decision-making. In the field of safe reinforcement learning, he leverages inverse constraint inference methods to enhance the safety of reinforcement learning systems. Additionally, he specializes in embodied robotic manipulation skills, developing efficient data engines to improve robotic operation in complex tasks, and designing robust control algorithms to ensure the safety and stability of humanoid robots in challenging environments. His research collaborators include Baidu Research, Huawei Noah's Ark Lab, and DexForce Research.

Portrait of Tarak Kharrat

Director, Real Analytics

Tarak Kharrat

  • Ph.D., University of Manchester, 2015
  • M.S., La Sorbonne (Paris 1-Paris 6), 2010
  • B.S., ENSTA Paris, 2009

Tarak Kharrat is currently the director at Real Analytics, London, U.K., where he leads AI and analytics research for football decision-making and player recruitment. He received the Ph.D. degree in statistics from the University of Manchester in 2015. He has also held lead data scientist roles at ComplyAdvantage and Kickdex, as well as research fellow appointments with the University of Liverpool and the University of Salford. His work focuses on football analytics, predictive modeling, and machine learning, and he has published influential research on soccer player evaluation, plus-minus ratings, football score forecasting, and statistical modeling.

Portrait of Yudong Luo

Postdoctoral Researcher

Yudong Luo

  • Ph.D., University of Waterloo, 2024
  • M.Sc., Simon Fraser University, 2020
  • B.Eng., Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 2018

Yudong Luo is currently a postdoctoral researcher with the Department of Decision Science, HEC Montreal, and Mila-Quebec AI Institute. He received the Ph.D. degree in computer science from the University of Waterloo in 2024, the M.Sc. degree in computing science from Simon Fraser University in 2020, and the B.Eng. degree in computer science from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2018. His research interests include reinforcement learning, risk-sensitive decision-making, machine learning, and sports analytics. His work has appeared in leading venues such as NeurIPS, ICLR, IJCAI, RA-L, and ICRA. He has also served as a reviewer for major conferences and journals, including NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML, ICRA, and JMLR.

Portrait of Mohamed Aloulou

Master Student

Mohamed Aloulou

  • Master 2 IASD, Universite PSL, ongoing
  • Ingenieur Polytechnicien, Ecole Polytechnique, 2025

Mohamed Aloulou is currently pursuing the M2 IASD master's program in artificial intelligence at Universite PSL as the final year of the Ingenieur Polytechnicien Program in applied mathematics at Ecole Polytechnique. He previously completed research internships at Birmingham City F.C., within Real Analytics, where he contributed to offline reinforcement learning tools for football tactics. His research interests include machine learning, reinforcement learning, and sports analytics.

Portrait of Javier Lopez Pena

Principal Engineer, Real Analytics

Javier López Peña

  • Ph.D., Universidad de Granada, 2007
  • M.S., Universiteit Antwerpen, 2006
  • B.S., Universidad de Granada, 2003

Javier López Peña is currently a Principal AI Engineer at Real Analytics. He received the Ph.D. degree in mathematics from Universidad de Granada in 2007, the master's degree in noncommutative algebra and geometry from Universiteit Antwerpen in 2006, and the bachelor's degree in mathematics from Universidad de Granada in 2003. He has held a broad range of academic and industry leadership roles, including Senior Data Science Manager at Wayflyer, Head of Data Science at LoalApp and Oakam Ltd, Teaching Fellow at University College London, and Head of Research and Development at Kickdex. Earlier in his career, he was a Marie-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at Queen Mary University of London, and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics. His work spans artificial intelligence, statistical modeling, predictive analytics, and football analytics.

Portrait of Konstantin Sofeikov

Engineer, Real Analytics

Konstantin Sofeikov

  • Ph.D., University of Leicester, 2017

Konstantin Sofeikov is currently an Engineer with Real Analytics. He received the Ph.D. degree in applied mathematics from the University of Leicester in 2017, with a dissertation on measure concentration in computer vision applications. He previously held senior machine learning and research positions at WorldRemit, ComplyAdvantage, Arm, and Apical. Trained as an applied mathematician, he has extensive experience in machine learning, computer vision, scientific computing, and large-scale data processing systems. His work includes AI model evaluation pipelines, mathematical method development, image processing, and the design and improvement of efficient research and data infrastructure.

Portrait of Adam Reid

CTO, Real Analytics

Adam Reid

Adam Reid is currently the Chief Technology Officer at Real Analytics, where he leads the development of artificial intelligence systems for football decision-making. He previously founded and served as CTO of Kickdex, where he led the design and development of a football prediction and data science platform. Earlier in his career, he held a range of senior technical and software engineering roles across consulting, analytics, and financial technology. His expertise includes software architecture, machine learning systems, and applied AI for real-world decision support.

Portrait of Steven Spencer

Head of First Team Recruitment Data

Steven Spencer

  • Postgraduate Diploma, PFA Business School, ongoing

Steven Spencer is currently the Head of First Team Recruitment Data at Birmingham City F.C., where he specializes in data-driven player identification, squad construction, and recruitment strategy. Drawing on a distinctive background across elite football, recruitment, and leadership, he combines analytical insight with practical football expertise to support first-team decision-making and long-term competitive advantage. He previously founded and led Futura Sports Management, worked as a football consultant with Real Analytics, and built extensive experience as a licensed football agent. Earlier in his career, he was a professional football player with Sheffield United PLC. He is also pursuing a Postgraduate Diploma in Global Football Sport Directorship at PFA Business School.

Portrait of Joe Carnall

Head of Recruitment

Joe Carnall

  • City Technology College Kingshurst, 2005

Joe Carnall is currently the Head of Recruitment at Birmingham City F.C., after previously serving as the club's Chief Scout. He has built an extensive career in elite football across recruitment, scouting, tactical analysis, and performance analysis, with senior roles at Birmingham City, Millwall, Stoke City, Derby County, Nottingham Forest, and Sheffield United football clubs. With deep experience in player identification, squad building, opposition and tactical analysis, and recruitment strategy, he is known for combining traditional football insight with data-informed decision-making to support high-level first-team operations. His professional interests include player recruitment, scouting, performance analysis, and football analytics.

Portrait of Ian McHale

Professor

Ian McHale

  • Ph.D., University of Manchester, 2001
  • B.S., University of Liverpool, 1998

Ian McHale is currently a Professor of Sports Analytics with the University of Liverpool, after previously serving as a Professor at the University of Salford. He received the Ph.D. degree in statistics from the University of Manchester and the bachelor's degree in mathematical physics from the University of Liverpool. His research focuses on statistics in sport, sports forecasting, and the analysis of gambling markets and gambling-related behavior. He was the founding Chair of the Royal Statistical Society's Statistics in Sport Section, has served as an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Forecasting and the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sport, and has published extensively on ranking methods, forecasting in football, tennis, cricket, and golf. He has also advised football clubs, the Premier League, and other major organizations, and in 2005 created the EA SPORTS Player Performance Indicator, the official player ratings system of the Barclays Premier League.

Portrait of Oliver Schulte

Professor and School Director

Oliver Schulte

  • Ph.D., Carnegie Mellon University, 1997
  • M.Sc., Carnegie Mellon University, 1993
  • B.Sc., University of Toronto, 1992

Oliver Schulte is currently a Professor and School Director with the School of Computing Science at Simon Fraser University, where he also directs the Structured Machine Learning Lab and is affiliated with the Department of Statistics, the VINCI institute, and the SFU Sports Analytics Group. He received the Ph.D. and M.Sc. degrees in logic and computation from Carnegie Mellon University in 1997 and 1993, respectively, and the B.Sc. degree in computing science from the University of Toronto in 1992. His research interests include machine learning for structured data, learning theory, computational game theory, and sports analytics. He has made influential contributions to relational learning, reinforcement learning for sports analytics, and predictive modeling, and has received recognition, including an NSERC Discovery and Accelerator award, a Strategic Project partnership award, and a best paper award at the StarAI@IJCAI workshop.

Portrait of Hongyuan Zha

Presidential Chair Professor

Hongyuan Zha

  • Ph.D., Stanford University, 1993
  • B.S., Fudan University, 1984

Hongyuan Zha is a Presidential Chair Professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and the Associate Dean of the School of Data Science. He received the B.S. degree in mathematics from Fudan University in 1984 and the Ph.D. degree in scientific computing from Stanford University in 1993. He previously served on the faculty of Georgia Institute of Technology and Pennsylvania State University, and also worked at Inktomi Corporation. His research interests include machine learning and its applications. He has published over 400 papers in leading journals and conferences, with more than 42,000 citations. His honors include the Leslie Fox Prize, the SIGIR 2011 Best Student Paper Award as advising professor, and the NeurIPS 2013 Outstanding Paper Award.

Portrait of Wei-Shi Zheng

Full Professor

Wei-Shi Zheng

  • Ph.D., Sun Yat-sen University, 2008
  • B.S., Sun Yat-sen University, 2003

Wei-Shi Zheng is currently a Full Professor with Sun Yat-sen University. He has published more than 200 papers, including more than 150 publications in main journals (IEEE TPAMI, IJCV, and IEEE TIP) and top conferences (ICCV, CVPR, SIGGRAPH, ECCV, and NeurIPS). His research interests include person/object association and activity understanding, and the related weakly supervised/unsupervised and continuous learning machine learning algorithms. He has served as the Area Chair of ICCV, CVPR, ECCV, BMVC, and NeurIPS. He has joined the Microsoft Research Asia Young Faculty Visiting Programme. He is a Cheung Kong Scholar Distinguished Professor. He was a recipient of the Excellent Young Scientists Fund of the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Royal Society-Newton Advanced Fellowship of the U.K. He is an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, Artificial Intelligence journal, and Pattern Recognition.

BibTeX

@article{xu2026tacticgen,
  title   = {TacticGen: Grounding Adaptable and Scalable Generation of Football Tactics},
  author  = {Xu, Sheng and Liu, Guiliang and Kharrat, Tarak and Luo, Yudong and Aloulou, Mohamed and Lopez Pena, Javier and Sofeikov, Konstantin and Reid, Adam and Spencer, Steven and Carnall, Joe and McHale, Ian and Schulte, Oliver and Zha, Hongyuan and Zheng, Wei-Shi},
  journal = {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.18210},
  year    = {2026},
  url     = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.18210}
}