This is how NextplAI came about. Not from a tech startup. From a coaching session, a drive home, and a question that wouldn't go away.
My name is Sean Rigby. I'm a football coach with around 20 years of experience — grassroots, semi-professional, and at clubs across all four of England's professional divisions. I'm also a plasterer. NextplAI was my idea. Here's where it came from.
I left school having played in Sheffield United's Academy. Got released before signing a professional contract. Stayed in Sheffield, played at semi-professional level for a couple of years, then came back to Stoke and did the same again. Eventually, work took over — plastering was paying the bills and football was giving me one weekend off in four. So I dropped down to Sunday mornings and registered at Saturday clubs on a "call me if you need me" basis.
Around 24 or 25, I started helping out with coaching sessions because I enjoyed it and my job finished at five. What started as setting up cones turned into taking the full session. The manager stopped turning up. I took it on. Numbers grew — first team players, reserve players, players coming from other clubs because the sessions were good. I had a knack for it.
I started doing junior coaching too, and at 28 I did my Level One. Quickly followed by Level Two. Quickly followed by the UEFA B — and in between those, the UEFA Level One, Two and B goalkeeping badges, plus Levels One, Two and Three on the youth modules, finishing with the Advanced Youth Module Award. I sat the assessment for Youth Module Three rather than completing the fourth session — it's since been restructured to align with UEFA modules.
I went full-time as a football coach. I coached at Premier League clubs. Championship clubs. League One and Two. Right the way down to grassroots. I've coached adult first teams and I've coached four-year-olds chasing a ball around a car park. Every level. Every age.
Then circumstances changed. First child on the way. Mortgage. Football coaching doesn't pay enough — even at professional clubs. So I went back to plastering and kept coaching at amateur and semi-professional level on a voluntary or part-paid basis. That's still where I am today.
I'm a Sheffield United fan. A few years ago the club brought in an analyst who used an AI model to identify players performing above their level — finding gems in the Bulgarian Second Division, that kind of thing. It didn't fully work out at Sheffield's level. But I knew the technology was there. It was flawed. It just needed time and application.
Around the same time, my own son was playing football. He had player-tracking devices on his boots, a performance vest, VEO cameras recording his games, heat mapping at matches. Every tool imaginable was being used to analyse what he was doing.
"Why are we using AI to analyse players — when we could use it to teach them?"
That question came to me on a drive home from a plastering job. I started looking into it. At the time, almost nobody was doing it. The technology existed. The application didn't. So I decided to build it.
I've always coached the same way. It's not my job to tell you what to do on that pitch. It's my job to create an environment where you can explore, create, fail, and achieve. The achievements aren't mine. They're yours. If you have a question, ask me. If you're struggling, come to me. But I'm going to put you into situations and let you figure your way out of them.
That philosophy had to go into the system. And that's where the PES method came in.
Ask those three questions consistently and you start to think faster. You'll be slow at first. You'll get tackled. That's fine — that's learning. The best footballers in the world are the fastest thinkers. That's it. That's the only difference. Lionel Messi can do what Sunday morning players can do. He just knows when, where, how and why to do it faster than they can breathe.
The system had to reflect this. AI deals in fact — not opinion. You ask ten parents on the touchline for their opinion of a situation, you'll get seven different answers. The only opinion that matters in that moment is the child's. They made the decision. They executed it. The system needed to deal in fact alone: people, equipment, space — and what can you do about it?
AI should not replace coaches. That time on the pitch with a coach is the most important time. But most kids train once, maybe twice a week. They play once, maybe twice. What do they do on the other days?
I know what my own son's extra football was costing us. At one point we were spending close to £200 a week — two teams' subs, one-to-one coaching, after-school sessions. And we were struggling. People in lesser-paid jobs genuinely couldn't afford it at all. That isn't fair.
One evening my son came home absolutely exhausted — the school had done a bleep test and, being competitive, he'd given it everything. We had a one-to-one session already paid for. The choice was: drag him to a pitch in the rain, tired, or give him the night off and lose the £35. We gave him the night off. Because rest is as important as exercise.
"This coach is there 24 hours a day, waiting for the question. That's its job."
If they're tired, they don't have to use it. They can rest. But the next morning before school, or Saturday after the game, or Sunday afternoon at grandma's — whenever it suits them — the question is waiting to be asked and the answer is ready to come back. On their terms. At their pace.
All of those thoughts came together into what NextplAI is now. It's not finished. It's rough, it's clunky, there's a lot of refining still to go. But the basic technology is there. And the exciting part — moving from 92% accuracy to 95, to 98, to the target of 100% — that work starts now.
We've got academic papers circulating at universities. Staffordshire is the closest and most involved, but Derbyshire University is another one we're linked with. Major institutions are reading about this and asking where it can go. I'm a plasterer from Stoke who did football coaching. I'm now sitting in Zoom calls with people who have more letters after their name than I've ever encountered, trying to explain a system I sometimes don't fully understand myself. It's gone that big.
We're in conversations about taking this global — and with organisations at the very top level of the technology industry. This is moving into other sports, other areas of learning, other teaching environments. The individual learner inside a group session. Academic application. It's a lot bigger than a football app.
But right now, the focus is simple. Every single person who comes to NextplAI — we want to help them. If you improve your game by one per cent. If you get the determination to push just that little bit harder. If this app helps you become a more independent thinker — that's a success. That's the whole point.
The cherry on top would be a kid who uses this and goes on to sign a professional contract. Of course it would. But not everybody will. So if it means you play at a better level on a Sunday morning, or you stop second-guessing every touch, or you just ask more questions — we'll take that too.
NextplAI doesn't care who you are, where you're from, how old you are, what your background is. It just asks: what's your question? And it comes back with an answer. In a world full of opinions, I think that's something worth building.