Gianluca Vialli visits Italy pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai.

Gulf Today, Staff Reporter 

After his visit to the Italy Pavilion last month, football legend Gianluca Vialli makes a surprising return to Expo 2020 Dubai for a virtual launch of the Soccer and Data Cup at the Italy pavilion.

During his twenty years long career as a professional footballer, former Italian team striker and Chelsea legend scored 259 goals at club level, 16 goals with the national team, and 11 goals with the Italy national under-21 football team, for a total of 286 goals in more than 500 appearances, making him the tenth-highest scoring Italian player in all competitions.

Soccer and Data CUP is a sports and IT-based competition of ideas focused on the role of sport as an enabler for development and peace and its social, educational and economic dimensions.

Soccer and Data Cup  at Expo 2020 Dubai would be a three- day marathon of sports activities and analysis of the data of the races played (mini international student tournament).

The students, with the help of mentors and experts from sport analytics, will find themselves immersed in a digital co-design competition using sports data of games played: they will be tasked with finding key solutions to a specific challenge question using selected sports data sets. The teams will work to present their solution, even pending a jury verdict.

The event is organised by the Italy Pavilion in collaboration with the Italian Ministry of Education and the University of Pisa.