Former Spain manager Robert Moreno has been dismissed after relying heavily on ChatGPT to make decisions for his team.
The 48-year-old left Russian First League side FC Sochi last September after earning just one point in seven matches. According to the club’s former sporting director, Andrei Orlov, Moreno’s dependence on AI led to some unusual and impractical decisions.
During an away trip to Khabarovsk, Moreno strictly followed ChatGPT’s recommendations for scheduling. He ordered his players to train at 7 a.m. two days before the match and instructed them to stay awake for an astonishing 28 hours straight.
Orlov recalled the bizarre incident in an interview with Sports Russia:
“When we were preparing for the Khabarovsk trip, Robert said, ‘I’ve got it all figured out. I’ve set up all the trip parameters in ChatGPT.’ I looked at the plan, and it showed that the players weren’t supposed to sleep for 28 hours. I asked him, ‘Robert, that’s all great, but when are the guys going to sleep?’”
He added:
“The players didn’t understand why we had to wake up at 5 a.m. and train at 7. We had Oleg Kozhemyakin on the team, who had previously played a year for SKA Khabarovsk, but Moreno didn’t consult him. In the end, we just followed the schedule created by ChatGPT.”
Moreno’s AI-driven approach didn’t stop at training schedules. He also used ChatGPT to decide on player transfers. Last summer, while choosing a new striker, he inputted data on Vladimir Pisarsky, Pavel Meleshin, and Artur Shushenachev into the AI. ChatGPT recommended Shushenachev, who ultimately failed to score in 10 appearances.
Orlov explained:
“Using AI as an additional tool is fine, but for Moreno, ChatGPT became one of his main tools. Towards the end, the Russian players were very unhappy with him, and the foreigners weren’t confident in his ideas either. He was completely unsympathetic to his assistants and players—people sensed it.”
Under Moreno, FC Sochi were relegated from the Russian Premier League to the First League.
Moreno’s career includes managing Spain on an interim basis for three matches, before being appointed permanently in June 2019 after Luis Enrique resigned due to his daughter’s illness.
