Qatar World Cup to feature semi-automated offside technology

FIFA, football’s international governing body, said the technology will be used at the tournament in Qatar as ‘a support tool for the video match officials and on-field officials’.

The semi-automated offside technology builds on VAR (video assistant referee) technology that was introduced at the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia.

In a statement, Pierluigi Collina, chairman of the FIFA Referees Committee, said: “VAR has already had a very positive impact on football and we can see that the number of major mistakes has already been dramatically reduced. We expect that semi-automated offside technology can take us a step further. We are aware that sometimes the process to check a possible offside takes too long, especially when the offside incident is very tight. This is where semi-automated offside technology comes in – to offer faster and more accurate decisions.”

The new system uses 12 tracking cameras mounted underneath the roof of the stadium to track the ball and up to 29 data points of each player, calculating their exact position on the pitch 50 times per second. The 29 collected data points are said to include all limbs and extremities that are relevant for making offside decisions.