Anicet Mbida 07:02, December 01, 2021
Anicet Mbida delivers to us every morning the best in terms of innovation.
Today's innovation should speed up decision-making by video assistance during offside. They will be detected automatically in real time by a machine.
The system is tested in official competition on Tuesday 30 at the FIFA Arab Cup.
It looks like a sort of hawkeye for football: ten very high speed cameras are placed on the upper part of the stadium.
They analyze the movements and the position of the 4 limbs of each player in relation to the ball, hundreds of times per second and to the nearest millimeter.
And if an offside is detected, the VAR referees will be instantly notified with perfectly timed images.
This will allow them to validate the decision and notify the field referee if necessary.
Today it can take up to 5 minutes to confirm an offside.
With this system it will be much faster.
The game will only be smoother.
Does that mean that the referees are no longer going to be of any use then?
No, because we want to keep the spirit of arbitration assistance.
The decision will not be given by the machine as with the hawkeye in tennis.
It will always be humans who will make the final decision.
On the other hand, the referees will no longer have to go for the right slow motion, to stop the image exactly at the moment of the pass and then to draw lines to know which member of which player exceeds or not.
The advantage of an automated system: it will always be the same interpretation and the same margin of error for everyone.
It should be remembered that some offside is played today at a small centimeter.
Is it still a test or will it be extended to all matches?
This is one of the last tests.
There have already been many more on unofficial matches in Germany, England and Spain.
The objective is to be fully operational during the next World Cup in Qatar in 2022. If this could make the game more fluid, not sure that it will put an end to the current controversies over the VAR.