Footballers, your jobs are safe for now: Watch as China's first 3-on-3 robot football match kicks off (and ends with two bots being stretched off the pitch!)

China's first three-on-three robot football tournament kicked off in Beijing last Sunday. But the quality of play on show suggests that a robot won't be claiming the Ballon d'Or any time soon. As the AI-controlled bots shuffled slowly across the turf, they bumped into each other, toppled over, and only occasionally even kicked the ball. By the time the final whistle blew, two bots had to be stretchered off the pitch after taking falls that would earn most human players a yellow card for diving. Cheng Hao, founder of Booster Robotics, which supplied the robots for the tournament, told the Global Times that the robots currently have the skills of five-to six-year-old children.