As every football fan knows, the FIFA World Cup starts this month in Qatar. This is the first time that it has been played during what is the football season in European countries.
This is because it would be too hot in Qatar to play in midsummer, which is when it normally takes place.
At the last World Cup, held in Russia in 2018, the world of football was introduced to technology, which was of course VAR.
This year, it is planned that another piece of technology will make its debut. This is the semi-automated offside alert. It is hoped this will mean that offsides will be more correctly given, but also do away with the delayed offside flag.
At present, assistant referees are forced to wait until the ball goes out of play in case the VAR disagrees.
To a non-technology person like myself, it is difficult to understand how this new technology works, but there will be 12 cameras in the stadiums monitoring 29 tracking points on each player.
As I understand it, this is combined with a ball tracking sensor which can tell when the ball is played.
The great difficulty with offside as I’ve mentioned before, is that the judgement has to be made when the ball is played, which can be a considerable distance from the player who is in an offside position. As someone who has run probably a 1000 lines, I can tell you, getting it right isn’t always easy.
What happens with VAR at present, when a possible offside occurs, is they have to try and synchronise the two frames, the ball being kicked and where a player is at that time.
This can sometimes take quite a while to do, much to the exasperation of the players and spectators. With the new system, the assistant referee will receive both pieces of information, so it is hoped the decision will be more accurate and quicker.
However there is still one decision to be made, which the technology cannot do. An offside player does not commit an offence until playing the ball or interfering with the game is some way. This decision still has to be left to the assistant referee.
In this countries three top leagues, Premier, Championship and Women’s Super League, the referees’ shout over their intercom, ‘now’ when a kick could lead to a possible offside, so alerting the assistant referee in the same way. Perhaps not so accurate as the new system but a darned sight cheaper.
By Dick Sawdon Smith
