The European Handball Federation -EHF- and the University of Castilla-La Mancha -UCLM- have signed a five-year agreement to develop a data-driven, AI-powered Player Index. The tool is designed to raise the level of player performance evaluation at the EHF European Championships and turn part of the competitive analysis into information that is more explainable, reproducible and useful for European handball.
The project will have a direct application in the selection of the best male and female players at the EHF EURO, including each tournament’s All-star Team. Until now, that selection has relied on expert panels with experience and deep knowledge of international handball. The new index is not intended to replace that technical judgement, but to complement it with a methodology capable of translating part of the evaluation into objective and understandable parameters.
An index to explain performance
The Player Index will integrate artificial intelligence, machine learning and sports data analysis techniques to evaluate the performance of professional players. The tool will take into account the competitive context and the patterns observed during each championship, so that the assessment does not depend only on isolated actions or basic statistics, but on how those actions influence the game.
One of the system’s central elements will be its ability to explain its recommendations. In addition to identifying which players have had the greatest impact during a tournament, the index will show which factors influenced that assessment and the weight assigned to each of them. That explanatory dimension is key to strengthening trust in the process and helping coaches, analysts, players and federations better understand the real impact of individual actions.
From the All-star Team to handball development
The first milestone of the agreement will be the Women’s EHF EURO 2026, which will take place from 3 to 20 December in Poland, Romania, Czechia, Slovakia and Türkiye. The Player Index is expected to be used internally during that championship, while a public interface is planned for the Men’s EHF EURO 2028. The timeline points to a gradual rollout: first as an internal support tool and then as an open resource to expand the reading of performance.
Pedro Sequeira, chairman of the EHF Methods Commission, said the Player Index will provide “a scientifically validated, data-driven, and objective methodology” to evaluate and rank handball players. He also underlined that the tool will turn performance data into “clear, reliable, and interpretable information” to support coaches, analysts, players and federations. For the EHF, the project is intended to become a modern reference tool for player assessment, talent development and the overall evolution of handball in Europe.
UCLM is not starting from scratch
The agreement places UCLM in a European-scale project, but the university had already been working for years on the application of statistics, computer science and artificial intelligence to handball. One of the clearest precedents is BIDEA -Handball, Research and Development of Advanced Statistics-, an initiative aimed at bringing advanced data analysis to clubs and sporting structures. According to the university, the project was put into practice with teams such as Súper Amara Bera Bera, Telekom Veszprém, Balonmano Guadalajara and Balonmano Pozuelo de Calatrava.
That line of work also had an academic and technological track record. Researchers linked to UCLM developed studies on player performance evaluation in handball using soft computing techniques, such as the article A Fuzzy Framework to Evaluate Players’ Performance in Handball, focused on analysing performance indicators in short tournaments. In addition, the School of Computer Science at UCLM promoted applied experiences such as virtual reality goalkeeper training with BM Pozuelo de Calatrava, using systems capable of recording movements for later analysis.
From academic data to the EHF EURO
The relationship between UCLM and the EHF’s scientific ecosystem also had recent precedents. In November 2025, Eusebio Angulo and Julio Alberto López were invited as plenary speakers at the 8th EHF Scientific Conference, a step that already connected the university’s research with the European federation’s knowledge spaces. Angulo, López and Francisco Pascual Romero will now lead the development of the Player Index on behalf of UCLM, while the EHF’s Sports & Game Services department and the EHF Methods Commission will be involved on the federation’s side.
The agreement turns that trajectory into a tool for the main national-team stage in European handball. The difference lies in scale and application: what began as advanced research, collaboration with clubs and academic analysis will become part of the evaluation process at the EHF EURO. With the Player Index, the EHF and UCLM want artificial intelligence not only to organise data, but also to help explain more clearly why a player makes the difference within a tournament.
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