FIFA World Cup offside calls determined with sensor

2025-04-27 06:58:27admin

With 64 games to be played in the upcoming 2022 FIFA World Cup in November, the last thing anyone needs is to stop the games to review penalties. FIFA’s newest bit of nifty tech should hopefully help out with that.

The international soccer governing body announcedthat it would start using what it calls “semi-automated offside technology” to figure out if a player is offside or not, without a lengthy review. For those (like me) who aren’t soccer experts, that’s the rulestating that a player attacking the opponent’s goal cannot be closer to the goal than both the ball and the second-closest opposing player.

In other words, if the only thing between you and the goal is the goalkeeper while you don’t have the ball, you’re offside. It’s the kind of thing that regularly stops play and can be difficult to determine since all it takes is half an inch of someone’s knee to be closer to the goal than his opponent for it to count as offside. FIFA is installing 12 special tracking cameras around the stadiums (and putting a sensor inside the ball itself) to measure both the positions of players and the position of the ball.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

If this new tech detects that an offside penalty occurred, the guys in the video operations room get an alert, take a few seconds to verify it, and report it to an on-field referee. Once it’s confirmed by all parties, a 3D animation showing the offside penalty is created on the fly, before being shown to the people in the stands and those watching on TV at home.

Mashable Light Speed Want more out-of-this world tech, space and science stories? Sign up for Mashable's weekly Light Speed newsletter. By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Thanks for signing up!

Personally, I can’t wait to see one of those 3D animations glitch out terribly and show a guy’s knee where his head should be or something.

Even as a non-soccer fan, the potential benefits of this new system are super obvious. I follow several Americans who wake up at odd hours on weekends to watch English soccer on Twitter, and they’re constantlypissed off about the video assistant referee (or VAR) system currently in place for reviewing calls. It not only slows the games down, but a reliance on human referees reviewing frame-by-frame footage can result in calls that are, to some, a little subjective.