For most young soccer players, development is guided by a rotating collection of opinions. One coach emphasizes speed, another focuses on positioning, and the next identifies an entirely different weakness. Amir Donath experienced that uncertainty firsthand while growing up playing and later coaching soccer in Switzerland. He loved the sport, but rarely had an objective way to understand where he stood, how he was progressing, or what he should work on next. Today, as co-founder and CEO of Game1.ai, Donath is building the system he wishes had existed when he was a young player: an objective, data-driven layer that helps athletes and coaches turn performance into a clear development plan.
The idea began taking shape after Donath moved from Europe to Stanford Graduate School of Business. He became fascinated by how deeply data had transformed professional American sports, from baseball to the NBA and NFL, and was surprised that comparable tools remained far less accessible in European youth soccer. The contrast became especially clear during a Stanford sports innovation conference, where he listened to leaders discuss sports investment, analytics, and performance technology. Most of the conversation centered on professional athletes. Donath began asking why young players, whose development could be shaped most significantly by better information, were receiving so little of it.
His path to Game1 had already given him experience translating complex information into practical decisions. Donath studied economics and sports science at the University of Bern, completed a master’s degree in innovation and entrepreneurship at ESADE, worked at McKinsey, and helped launch more than 20 international markets for Bird before earning his Stanford MBA. At McKinsey, he learned to structure problems and convert analysis into recommendations. At Bird, he saw how operational data could determine where vehicles should be placed, how many should be deployed, and how a fast-growing company could manage activity across multiple markets. Game1 applies a similar principle to youth sports: collecting data is only valuable when it helps someone decide what to do next.
Donath found his technical co-founder close to home. He started Game1 with his brother Yaniv, a Cambridge-trained physicist with a background in mathematics, machine learning, and quantitative research. Both brothers grew up on the soccer field, but their professional strengths are sharply divided. As Amir describes it, “He builds, I sell.” Yaniv leads the technical development of the platform, while Amir focuses on customers, partnerships, operations, and commercialization. Beneath that division is what Donath calls a “blind trust,” built through a shared history and an obsession with the same problem.
Game1 works directly with clubs and academies rather than asking young athletes to conduct isolated tests in their backyards. Players, primarily between the ages of 10 and 16, participate in standardized assessments three or four times each year. The tests measure physical qualities such as acceleration, speed, and agility, as well as ball control, dribbling, technical execution, biological development, and performance in small-sided games. The result is not simply another scorecard. Coaches receive an objective picture of each athlete’s development and one or two priorities that the player can focus on during the following months.
Biological maturity is particularly important to that evaluation. Two 12-year-olds may share a birthday year while being at very different stages of physical development. One may temporarily be taller, faster, and stronger, while the other may possess comparable or greater long-term potential but develop later. Game1 normalizes performance using age and estimated biological maturity, then adds longitudinal context so coaches can evaluate trajectory rather than simply rewarding the most physically advanced player at a particular moment. For Donath, this is as much about confidence as scouting. A player who appears behind today may need encouragement and a targeted plan, not a conclusion that they lack talent.
The technology is grounded in historical academy data rather than a generic collection of soccer drills. Donath and his team approached European clubs that had been conducting standardized player assessments for as long as a decade. Much of that information had remained unused in spreadsheets, so Game1 offered clubs analytics in exchange for permission to use the records in developing its models. The company then examined which measurements demonstrated meaningful predictive value, eliminating exercises that added time without improving the quality of the analysis. The goal was to create the smallest practical testing process capable of producing the most useful developmental insight.
On the field, Game1 requires only two smartphones. Its computer-vision system replaces manual stopwatches and traditional timing gates, automatically recording measurements and sending the relevant performance data into the platform. Donath says the company does not retain player video, focusing instead on the measurements derived from the testing process. The algorithm evaluates the athlete’s complete profile against thousands of historical examples and determines which intervention may be most valuable. In some cases, the recommendation is to correct a weakness. In others, the better path is to further develop a strength that could become a defining advantage.
Game1 reports that its platform has processed more than 500,000 data points and achieved a 95 percent hit rate in historical backtesting. According to Donath, the company trains its models on 80 percent of its historical dataset, then tests their predictions against the remaining 20 percent, where the eventual outcomes are already known. The model can be adapted to different ambitions, such as estimating whether a player has the potential to compete at an elite European level or in Division I college soccer. The figure is company-reported, but it illustrates Game1’s larger objective: helping clubs make better long-term development decisions rather than collecting statistics that merely describe the last game.
That distinction also shapes the company’s commercial strategy. Game1 operates through a B2B2C model in which clubs generally incorporate the platform into existing season or player fees. Donath prioritizes full-team adoption because the system becomes less useful when only a portion of a roster participates. The club manages implementation, the coach uses the information to guide development, and players and parents receive a clearer understanding of progress. According to Donath, Game1 is now working with roughly 20 clubs across the United States, including the LA Galaxy and Boston Bolts, along with close to 20 clubs across Europe.
Game1 is deliberately focused on development rather than automating roster construction or replacing coaches. At younger ages, a player’s ideal position may not even be established. The platform can identify patterns among historically similar athletes and suggest that a coach experiment with a player in another position, but the recommendation remains part of a broader human decision. Donath’s preferred framing is not that AI can determine who wins next weekend. It is that better information can help each player become better over the course of months and years.
The company remains a small team, with engineers working alongside Yaniv and a business-development group composed largely of current and former professional and Division I players. Game1 has also assembled an advisory network that includes Julie Haddon, a former NWSL board member who now serves on the board of the WTA. Donath says many of those involved with the company were drawn to its mission because they had the same reaction he did: they wished they had possessed this kind of guidance when they were younger. Game1 is now expanding its work with academies across the United States and Europe while preparing for several forthcoming partnerships.
For Donath, Game1 is ultimately about making youth development more consistent, understandable, and motivating. A young athlete should not have to interpret a different opinion every season or assume that being smaller and slower today defines what they can become tomorrow. Coaches will always provide the context, judgment, and human relationships that shape a player’s career. Game1 is designed to give them a stronger foundation for those decisions.
The company’s most ambitious contribution may therefore be its simplest: giving every young player a clearer answer to the question Donath repeatedly asked while growing up on the soccer field: What should I work on next?
