Why Don’t They Certify? When AI Sees the Goal, Football Stops Being Just Probabilities

The Field Is Not a Scoreboard

I grew up in Chicago’s South Side—Portuguese lullabies at dawn, basketball courts at dusk. My father fixed machines; my mother taught equations. We didn’t need certificates to know greatness. Back then, when U.S. academies dismissed raw potential for ‘certified’ players—I saw it: they were measuring feet with spreadsheets while dreams still ran barefoot on dirt pitches in São Paulo.

Algorithmic Amnesia

They call it ‘data-driven scouting.’ But what if the algorithm forgets the cry of a boy who dribbles past defenders with no shoes? What if ‘accuracy’ means ignoring the rhythm only because it doesn’t fit into an Excel cell? I once modeled a transfer from Rio to Leeds—not because my model predicted success, but because I heard the silence.

The Poetry of Motion

The real goal isn’t in the final whistle. It’s in that split-second decision before the pass—the one made by a kid whose name never made it onto any roster. That’s not probability—it’s fate breathing through code.

The Silent Erasure of Culture

We export analytics like exports. We certify bodies instead of souls. But here’s what gets lost: when you optimize for efficiency, you erase identity.

Choose Your Code—or Your Soul?

You don’t need a badge to feel velocity. You just need to see what happens when nobody certifies.