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Main Authors: Zhao, Siyao, Ma, Hao, Pu, Zhiqiang, Huang, Jingjing, Pan, Yi, Wang, Shijie, Ming, Zhi
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.13326
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author Zhao, Siyao
Ma, Hao
Pu, Zhiqiang
Huang, Jingjing
Pan, Yi
Wang, Shijie
Ming, Zhi
author_facet Zhao, Siyao
Ma, Hao
Pu, Zhiqiang
Huang, Jingjing
Pan, Yi
Wang, Shijie
Ming, Zhi
contents Creating offensive advantages during open play is fundamental to football success. However, due to the highly dynamic and long-sequence nature of open play, the potential tactic space grows exponentially as the sequence progresses, making automated tactic discovery extremely challenging. To address this, we propose TacEleven, a generative framework for football open-play tactic discovery developed in close collaboration with domain experts from AJ Auxerre, designed to assist coaches and analysts in tactical decision-making. TacEleven consists of two core components: a language-controlled tactical generator that produces diverse tactical proposals, and a multimodal large language model-based tactical critic that selects the optimal proposal aligned with a high-level stylistic tactical instruction. The two components enables rapid exploration of tactical proposals and discovery of alternative open-play offensive tactics. We evaluate TacEleven across three tasks with progressive tactical complexity: counterfactual exploration, single-step discovery, and multi-step discovery, through both quantitative metrics and a questionnaire-based qualitative assessment. The results show that the TacEleven-discovered tactics exhibit strong realism and tactical creativity, with 52.50% of the multi-step tactical alternatives rated adoptable in real-world elite football scenarios, highlighting the framework's ability to rapidly generate numerous high-quality tactics for complex long-sequence open-play situations. TacEleven demonstrates the potential of creatively leveraging domain data and generative models to advance tactical analysis in sports.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_13326
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle TacEleven: generative tactic discovery for football open play
Zhao, Siyao
Ma, Hao
Pu, Zhiqiang
Huang, Jingjing
Pan, Yi
Wang, Shijie
Ming, Zhi
Applications
Artificial Intelligence
Creating offensive advantages during open play is fundamental to football success. However, due to the highly dynamic and long-sequence nature of open play, the potential tactic space grows exponentially as the sequence progresses, making automated tactic discovery extremely challenging. To address this, we propose TacEleven, a generative framework for football open-play tactic discovery developed in close collaboration with domain experts from AJ Auxerre, designed to assist coaches and analysts in tactical decision-making. TacEleven consists of two core components: a language-controlled tactical generator that produces diverse tactical proposals, and a multimodal large language model-based tactical critic that selects the optimal proposal aligned with a high-level stylistic tactical instruction. The two components enables rapid exploration of tactical proposals and discovery of alternative open-play offensive tactics. We evaluate TacEleven across three tasks with progressive tactical complexity: counterfactual exploration, single-step discovery, and multi-step discovery, through both quantitative metrics and a questionnaire-based qualitative assessment. The results show that the TacEleven-discovered tactics exhibit strong realism and tactical creativity, with 52.50% of the multi-step tactical alternatives rated adoptable in real-world elite football scenarios, highlighting the framework's ability to rapidly generate numerous high-quality tactics for complex long-sequence open-play situations. TacEleven demonstrates the potential of creatively leveraging domain data and generative models to advance tactical analysis in sports.
title TacEleven: generative tactic discovery for football open play
topic Applications
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.13326