FIFA on Friday announced that semi-automated offside technology will be used at the World Cup in Qatar, starting on Nov. 21.
It will be a support tool for the video match officials and the on-field officials to help them make faster, more accurate and more reproducible offside decisions.
Following the use of VAR technology at the 2018 World Cup in Russia, FIFA president Gianni Infantino declared in The Vision 2020-23 that FIFA would strive to harness the full potential of technology in football and further enhance VAR.
The new technology uses 12 dedicated tracking cameras mounted underneath the roof of the stadium to track the ball and up to 29 data points of each individual player, 50 times per second, calculating their exact position on the pitch. The 29 collected data points include all limbs and extremities that are relevant for making offside calls.
Al Rihla, adidas’ official match ball for this World Cup, will provide a further vital element for the detection of tight offside incidents as an inertial measurement unit sensor will be placed inside the ball. This sensor, positioned in the center of the ball, sends ball data to the video operation room 500 times per second, allowing a very precise detection of the kick point.
By combining the limb- and ball-tracking data and applying artificial intelligence, the new technology provides an automated offside alert to the video match officials inside the video operation room whenever the ball is received by an attacker who was in an offside position at the moment the ball was played by a teammate.
Before informing the on-field referee, the video match officials will validate the proposed decision by manually checking the automatically selected kick point and the automatically created offside line, which is based on the calculated positions of the players’ limbs. This process happens within a few seconds and means that offside decisions can be made faster and more accurately.
After the decision has been confirmed by the video match officials and the referee, the exact same positional data points that were used to make the decision are then generated into a 3D animation that perfectly details the position of the players’ limbs at the moment the ball was played. This 3D animation, which will always show the best possible perspectives for an offside situation, will then be shown on the giant screens in the stadium and also will be made available to FIFA’s broadcast partners.
