The Super Cup, played at the Olympic Stadium, is the first official match to use the new offside detection technology. In Helsinki, we will see the start of a new era in football, writes Samu Saatsi.
The widely loathed president of the international soccer governing body Fifa Gianni Infantino didn’t lie in june.
– The semi-automatic offside system looks very good and promising, he stated at a press conference of Fifa and IFAB, the international body that decides on football rules, in mid-June.
In his statement, Infantino referred to the new offside detection technology that Fifa has pushed forward as part of the development of VAR technology, i.e. the video referee system.
The goals of the new semi-automatic offside technology are tough. Its main goal is to simplify, speed up and improve the referee’s decision-making in offside situations.
Now, almost two months later, the new technology has come a long way. It is planned to be used in full both in the men’s World Cup in November and December, and earlier in the group stage of the Champions League.
Technology using machine vision and artificial intelligence can at best revolutionize football. If it is found to work, to improve the game and, above all, to speed up the interpretation of offside situations, the threshold for the use of artificial intelligence and robots in the sport will be lowered. It would be a shocking leap in football, which has been known for its conservative rule development over the years.
Helsinki is the starting point for the official use of new technology. The system will be in official use for the first time in the Super Cup organized by UEFA, which will be played at the Olympic Stadium on Wednesday, where Eintracht Frankfurt and Real Madrid will meet.
What is the aim of the system?
No more protracted offside check situations. No more lines watched and drawn by a human acting as a video judge. No more wrong interpretations of offside situations. These are the things the new semi-automatic offside is aiming for.
In the Super Cup in Helsinki, the VAR system may get a change that will help it out of certain problem areas at the moment. At the same time, it revolutionizes football.
Fifa took the first big step in the development of the recognition of offside situations in the summer of 2018, when VAR technology was introduced on a large scale at the World Cup.
There were plenty of reasons for bringing it to football. For example, video technology and a new tool were needed to judge hand fouls, wrongly judged contact situations and even offside situations.
The leap was a big one for soccer, which had long refused to use video in refereeing at the international level. However, the development that took place over the decades has greatly increased the speed of the game, so the transition to modern times was mandatory.
VAR has spread around the world in various leagues and international tournaments. It has fulfilled its desired role as a support for judicial activities, but at the same time it has grown into a subject of constant criticism and its own separate problem.
Now the semi-automatic offside technology is supposed to solve one of the clear problem points. The time spent on checking and settling situations has been several minutes at most. Now, semi-automatic offside technology is supposed to drop that time down to 3-4 seconds.
How does the new offside technology work?
Fifa introduced (you go to another service) at the beginning of July, his new system and his goal to use it in the World Cup in Qatar in the winter. The semi-automatic offside technology has been tested in several different matches over the past two years, before its official implementation.
The semi-automatic offside technology is based on 12 tracking cameras that update game situation data 500 times per second. These are not the same as the TV cameras that are now used in VAR decisions and the use of which has generated a lot of criticism.
With the help of artificial intelligence, the chip-equipped game ball and the players are recognized from the data recorded by the cameras. Up to 29 body parts of the players on the field are identified, which are used to determine offside.
In the current offside rule, the offside situation is interpreted from the players’ body parts that can score a goal. When, for example, video referees have wrongly judged offsides in recent years, for example by looking at the players’ hands, the new technology can automatically distinguish the parts of the players’ bodies that affect the offside.
Based on the results of the system, the video referee conveys the information about the offside situation to the match referee on the field. This also gives rise to the term “semi-automatic” in the name. A person provides information about data to another person.
According to Fifa, the technology is meant to work very quickly, as the previously mentioned promise of a few seconds by the federation indicates.
The match at the Olympic Stadium shows the way
Raised to a respected position as a referee in his career and currently works as Fifa’s director of referees Pierluigi Collina gave his credit to the system in July.
– I am very confident in the operation of this system. We want to achieve accurate and fast decisions that will be adopted soon, Collina said (you switch to another service).
– The process is similar to the already used goal line technology, which no one in the football community questions. We strongly believe that a similar reaction can be expected from a semi-automatic offside.
In the Super Cup final played in Helsinki, we will see how the system works in an official game at the top level. The semi-automatic offside has already been unofficially tested, for example, in the Club World Cup tournament won by Chelsea.
If Fifa’s promises are true, in addition to the smoothness of the game, there will also be a change in the VAR experience of the spectators in the stadium and watching at home. The intention is always to create a visualization and slow motions for the stadium’s display boards and live broadcasts. These are supposed to spawn within 25 seconds.
It is also interesting how the new technology is still developing. According to Collina, it is intended to be developed so that it would not punish attacking players for marginal offside situations.
The system seems revolutionary. If everything works as it should, football and especially its VAR technology will have a starting point for a change of direction in the match at the Olympic Stadium. The system, which previously faced growing criticism, may get its first absolution.