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NWSL Harvey's Reign are fourth in the NWSL with one match left of the regular season. Steph Chambers / Getty Images Seattle Reign head coach Laura Harvey says she has leaned on artificial intelligence (AI) service Chat GPT to help inspire her tactics in the NWSL this season. The 45-year-old former Arsenal coach said she casually started testing the chatbot’s women’s soccer knowledge, before quizzing what ideas it might have for individual teams. Advertisement Harvey made the admission after being asked how she had evolved over the course of a two-decade coaching career and she explained she had never played a ‘back five’ of defenders until this season, but has used the tactical setup on multiple occasions since an initial suggestion from Chat GPT. “I was like: I wonder if Chat GPT could give you information about football and it would be beneficial? ” Harvey told the Soccerish Podcast. “One day in the offseason, I was writing things into Chat GPT like, ‘What is Seattle Reign’s identity? ’ And it would spurt it out. And I was like, ‘I don’t know if that’s true or not’. “And then like, ‘what do you need to do to be successful in the NWSL? ’ Like really broad questions. “And then I put in, ‘What formation should you play to beat NWSL teams? ’ And it spurted out every team in the league and what formation you should play. And for two teams — I’m not going to say who they are because they’ll know — it went, ‘You should play a back five. ’ So I did. No joke, that’s why I did it. “It was early in the season and I said to the coaching staff, I’m not joking this is what I did. And they were like, ‘huh, interesting’. ” Harvey explained the back five suggestion from Chat GPT inspired her to look into the formation further. After experiencing initial success with it, she enjoys the versatility and unpredictability that the defensive tactical setup provides her team. “We researched it, we did a deep dive on it, we thought about how we could play it, ” she continued. “And we went for it, and we liked it. It worked. We won the game. “It didn’t tell you how to play it or what to do in it or any of that stuff. It was just like ‘this is what we would say to do’. And I was like, ‘alright’. And that was what spurred me to look into it. So then I really looked into it. Advertisement “We’ve come in and out of it (the back five). Now we’re quite fluid, we can float in and out of it within games. And I love that. “When I hear coaches saying, ‘we don’t know what you’re going to do, you’re the hardest team to prepare for, you defend in multiple ways in games’. I’m just like, ‘yes! ’ I want everyone to not have a clue what we’re going to do. I think that is amazing. ” Harvey explained she had previously been reluctant to try the formation as she perceived it to be too negative and defensive. “I’d never really done a lot of research on it, ” she added. “I’d never really, like, invested into how it could be played in the women’s game. I’d only ever really seen it from afar, you know, watching men’s games really. “It was always sort of talked about as a way to see games out. You know, (you go ahead) and get into a back five and stop people from scoring, was sort of how, like, a back five had been talked about for me. ” With one match remaining in the regular season, the Reign are fourth in the 14-team NWSL, in a play-off spot, with 10 wins from 25 matches. This marks a vast improvement from last season, when they finished 13th. Harvey, who previously coached the Reign between 2013 and 2017, rejoined the club in 2021. The Brit has won three NWSL Shields with Seattle and The Women’s Cup in 2022. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Play today's puzzle Colin Millar is a Staff Writer for The Athletic. Prior to joining The Athletic, Colin was European Football writer at Mirror Football. From Belfast, he is the author of The Frying Pan of Spain: Sevilla vs Real Betis, Spain’s Hottest Football Rivalry, and he can be found on Twitter/X: @Millar_Colin Follow Colin on Twitter @Millar_Colin