The irruption of the VAR had, among its main tasks, to put an end to the errors in signaling offside, something that has clearly happened, but it is also true that there are incorrect positions -or correct- defined by millimeters, which in these four years of video arbitration They have generated quite a bit of controversy. Some lines drawn in these tight offsides have not been well received by players, clubs and fans, and that forced FIFA to take action in this regard.
From 2020 to today, in a total of 118 tests and two official competitions -The Arab Cup 2021 and the Club World Cup also last year-, the “semi-automatic offside” system has been used, as it has been popularly known, a technological tool that uses artificial intelligence with the objective of eliminating the error in the signaling of the illegal positions and that tomorrow will be used for the first time in a UEFA competition, in the European Super Cup that Real Madrid and Eintracht will play in Helsinki.
Champions and Qatar
The Champions League and the World Cup in Qatar will be the other two major competitions of this 22-23 season that will also use this innovative technology: “This innovative system will allow VAR teams to determine offside situations quickly and with more precision, improving thus the development of the game and the coherence of the decisions”, details Roberto Rosettihead of referees at UEFA.
The semi-automated offside technology will be possible thanks to the installation of twelve cameras under the stadium roof that will capture the movements of the ball and 29 data points for each player, 50 times per second, to calculate their exact positions on the pitch. field of play, with special emphasis on the extremities, key in detecting offside.
Added to this is the fact that the ball will have a sensor inside it that will serve as an “inertial measurement unit” and will send a data packet 500 times per second to the VAR room, which will achieve absolute precision of the exact moment the ball is hit.
Uniting these two innovations, the offside detection process will take place in a few seconds, achieving a more accurate and faster decision, and this will also be communicated to the spectators: «Once the video refereeing team and the main referee confirm the decision, the same position data used to adopt it will generate a three-dimensional animation that will perfectly detail the position of the player’s body parts at the moment of contact with the ball. This animation, which will show an offside position from the best angles, will be broadcast on the video markers and it will be distributed to those responsible for broadcasting the match on television to inform all viewers in the clearest and most transparent way possible, ”explains FIFA.
it’s not robotic
“We are aware that sometimes it takes too long to check a possible illegal position, especially when it is doubtful. This is where the technology in question is of great help, as it helps make decisions faster and more accurately,” he explains. Hill, president of the FIFA referees commission and former head of them at UEFA, who denies that this new instrument will leave aside the human factor: «It will serve for referees and assistant referees to make the most correct decisions on the field of play. I know that there are those who call it robotic offside, but it is not. The referees and assistant referees remain responsible for the decisions they make, “specifies the Italian. “This system is the result of three years of research and testing by FIFA and the other associations,” recalls President Gianni Infantino.
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