The Department of Systems and Biomedical Engineering (SBME) at Cairo University is delighted to celebrate another international research achievement by its students, with three football analytics papers accepted at icSPORTS 2026, the 14th International Congress on Sport Sciences Research and Technology Support, taking place on October 26–27, 2026, in Angers, France.
icSPORTS is an international multidisciplinary conference bringing together research across sports science, engineering, artificial intelligence, data analytics, biomechanics, performance analysis, and technology-supported sport. Accepted papers undergo an international double-blind peer-review process.
Under the supervision of Dr. Tamer Basha, Professor at the department, the following three works have been accepted:
“The Right Place at the Right Time: Reinforcement Learning for Tactical Positioning in Football”
by Fady Eleshary, Ahmed Anan, and Dr. Tamer Basha.
This work explores whether an AI agent can learn not simply to move into empty space, but to recognize and acquire tactically valuable space. Using tracking data from the 2022 FIFA World Cup, the study applies reinforcement learning to football positioning and investigates the tactical behaviors that emerge from the model.
“Football Match Outcome Prediction as a Baseline for Post-Match Fault Analysis”
by Mohamed Sheref Elezaly, Ammar Tamer Ellaithy, Bassel Gawdat, Noureldin Islam, and Dr. Tamer Basha.
Accepted as a Full Paper, this research develops a machine-learning baseline for predicting football match outcomes as a first step toward distinguishing between unexpected results and potential tactical shortcomings. The study combines technical match statistics with contextual information including expected goals (xG), weather, attendance, and market values, comparing classical machine-learning approaches with neural networks.
“TactFormer: Next-Event Prediction in Football from Synchronised Tracking and Event Data”
by Shehap Elhadary, Amrou Abdelmawla, and Dr. Tamer Basha.
This work investigates next-event prediction in football by combining event data with synchronized player-tracking information. Rather than predicting future actions from the event sequence alone, TactFormer incorporates the positions of players across the pitch, giving the model richer spatial and tactical context for anticipating what happens next.
Together, these three papers explore football from complementary perspectives: where players should position themselves, what determines match outcomes, and what is likely to happen next. Their acceptance at icSPORTS 2026 reflects the growing contribution of SBME students to research at the intersection of engineering, artificial intelligence, data science, and sports analytics.
The department extends its sincere congratulations to all participating students and to Dr. Tamer Basha for this achievement and for continuing to support student research that develops ambitious ideas into contributions to the international research community.
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