“It will be the evolution of refereeing”: the revolutionary change that FIFA is studying for 2022

Since its implementation, the offside rule was always in dispute and not even the help of the VAR (video assistant referee) managed to calm this situation. Before this panorama, Arsene Wenger, the director of development for world football, warned that FIFA is studying the possibility of making a major modification in the way of collecting these plays in the matches for 2022. The intention is to “Automate” offside And it is not ruled out that it will be implemented in the Qatar World Cup, which will take place at the end of the year

“There is a good chance that offside will be automated in 2022.” , warned the former England Arsenal manager during a meeting with the press in Paris. Although he did not want to give further details, he maintained: “I am obliged to keep it a secret, but will be the next of the great evolutions of arbitration”.

These statements took on even more force due to what happened during the final of the Nations League, which was defined 2 to 1 in favor of France over Spain with a goal that remained at the center of the controversy product of the position of striker Kylian Mbappé (The move was validated by the VAR).

Although the emergence of technology through the video assistant referee helped to solve this type of play, Wenger said that this change would help speed up the game, since in many situations several minutes are lost between the action is analyzed and then called to the head judge to corroborate the decision.

This change was already on the FIFA agenda, which announced in June 2020 that it sought to “develop a semi-automatic technology to signal offside, to give the VAR more information that will simplify the referee’s decision-making and optimize the analysis of the images”.

In this way, the landing of the “automatic” detection of the offside could say present in the Qatar World Cup 2022, which will take place at the end of the year for the first time (from November 21 to December 18).

During the note, Arsene Wenger took the opportunity to reinstall the idea of ​​holding a World Cup every two years, and not every four, as is the case today. “The reform that I propose is part of a reform of the calendar, I want to reduce the number of qualifying matches,” he commented.

Thibaut Courtois, goalkeeper for the Belgian national team and Real Madrid, precisely complained about the calendar after losing to Italy in the match for third place in the Nations League. “It is wrong that the players are not talked about. Now we hear that a World Cup will be played every two years. When will we rest? Never. But we are not robots. Nobody cares about us. In the end, the best players will get injured. Three weeks is not enough for us to play 12 months at the highest level. If we never say anything, it will always be the same, “he said.

“This match for third and fourth place is just a match for the money and we have to be honest about it. We just play it because for UEFA it is extra money. We only play it because it means extra money for UEFA. Look how much the lineups of both teams have changed. If the two had been in the final, other players would have played. That just shows that we play too many games. UEFA has just created another club tournament, the Conference League. It bothers them that other teams want a Super League but they don’t care about the players. They only care about the money in their pockets ”, he outlined.

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