SHANGHAI, Sept. 18, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Leading sports AI company AIball invited their Chief Football Intelligence Officer and AIball Robot Spokesperson, the football legend Lothar Matthaus, to visit their Shanghai headquarters. During the trip Lothar reflected on the state of development of foreign football clubs in China and reviewed the recent work of AIBall's global football intelligence network, the international team of reporters and experts which he has led for several years. He was joined on this trip by his close friends and teammates from Germany's 1990 World Cup winning side, Andreas Brehme and Thomas Hassler. Brehme is his best friend in football, part of the "German Trio" at Inter Milan, while Hassler played more than 100 games for Germany and was made German Footballer of the Year on two separate occasions. These three German stars met the press and gave their views on Chinese and world football.
A legend of the game, Lothar Matthaus has earned almost all the honors a footballer can get. A Ballon d'Or winner, he led the German team to victory in the 1990 World Cup after losing the final in 1986 to Maradona's Argentina - Maradona described Matthaus as his toughest ever opponent. He was selected as one of the greatest ten "No. 10"s in the history of football by FIFA's official magazine, FIFA Weekly, and is widely considered to be one of the finest and most complete players to have ever played the game, which was recognized when he entered the International Football Hall of Fame in 2011. At the 2018 World Cup he was a guest analyst for Sky television as well as being a FIFA ambassador. He remains one of only three players to have played at five World Cups. He is the most-capped German international footballer with 150 appearances between 1980 and 2000.
Matthaus remains active in the footballing world and also follows Chinese football closely. He is even open to the idea of coaching in China one day. "I have been paying close attention to the development of Chinese football, especially after I was invited by AIBall to lead their Chief Football Intelligence Officer in 2016. I have always believed that football is a global sport. I am a retired athlete now, so promoting football in the world is my current mission. The global intelligence network brings together reporters from a wide range of countries. It delivers fast and accurate information from the match build-up and during the game. It has become a popular product in China. I also tried out the AIball chat robot. You can chat with her while you are watching the game. She is interactive. You can ask her questions about the game - statistics, player history, match rules - and she will answer immediately. It's great. "
A recent government document in China claimed that the value of Shanghai's sports industry will reach 400 billion yuan by 2025, making it one of the leading cities in the world for sports. Rapid development is therefore expected in the sports industry in Shanghai and in China as a whole. Recently more and more high-tech internet companies have emerged in the Chinese sports industry. AIBall is one such example, coming from a company that started off processing sports data but then developed into more advanced fields like artificial intelligence. Their flagship product, the "CubeGoal" app, has been on the market for six years and currently has millions of users in Europe, America, Asia and Australia. With years of big data experience, their global football intelligence network, and their new artificial intelligence product AIball, they are continuing to break new ground in the sports industry.
