EThe semi-automatic offside arrives and everything indicates that to stay. In 2018 it was VAR and now they want to go one step further so that justice reigns in football. The next November 22 will begin to be used officially in the World Cup in Qatar and FIFA seems determined to keep it going afterward. The system will help video refereeing teams and referees on the field of play to make faster, more accurate and more reliable decisions.
To improve communication with the supporters and while the referee is deciding if it is offside or not, the play will be recreated on the screens of the stadiums with a 3D animation. It will be seen in the stadium and on television. Johanmes Holzmller, deputy director of technology at FIFA, was in charge of presenting the project.
The offside must be precise and reliable. All technology is created to help referees make decisions. Twelve cameras installed under the roof of the stadium will capture the movements of the ball and up to 29 data points for each player. 50 times per second, to calculate their exact positions on the pitch. The 29 groups of data collected include limbs and body parts that are taken into account to generate an offside.
The Adidas A Rhina ball will include a sensor in the center, which will send data 500 times per second to the video room, allowing it to accurately detect the exact moment the ball is hit. There are two basic elements of the system, such as the ball and its sensor and the twelve cameras. They are the starting point of everything.
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With the mix of player limb and ball tracking dataand through artificial intelligence, the new technology provides an automatic warning to the video room whenever an attacker who was in the area receives a ball. offside position the moment his partner played the ball.
For corroborate your proposal before reporting it to the head referee, the video referee team manually checks the exact moment of the shot provided by the data, as well as the offside line also created automatically and based on the positions of the player’s extremities that the system has calculated. Since it lasts only a few seconds, the process allows faster and more accurate decisions.
Las automatic alerts they will reach the operator in just a few seconds as soon as the move occurs. We can’t forget the referees manual check and that serve to verify that everything works correctly.
The whole process in 25 seconds
When there is a goal, it will automatically appear a orange flag and that means that the move is very close to offside and therefore everything starts to work. The video operators check everything from that moment and they immediately communicate it to the referees. The average of the entire operation before this system is 70 seconds and now it will become 70 seconds. 25 seconds.
By the time the decision has been made and is communicated from the WAS to the referee, the previous process continues. A 3D recreation for viewing by fans in the stadium and on television. The exact position of the players and the ball is repeated and shown. This process will be carried out when the decision has already been made by the referee.
The use of the technology of this system began in 2019. The covid delays everything. In 2021 various tests could start, especially in the Arabian Cup.
Pierluigi Collina, head of refereeing for FIFA, defends the use of technology. “There is talk of robot referees, it looks good, but it is not true. The field referees will continue to be decisive. Semi-automatic offside will only be used when a player who is offside touches the ball. If there is interference in the play, it will be the referee’s decision. In four or five seconds it will be possible to detect the offside, but that is impossible, it will be in 25 or 20 seconds, something very important. The goal is to be faster and more accurate.”
