Football’s regulatory body (IFAB) said on June 13 that football will introduce a 3D offside detector, which is semi-automatic VAR offside technology. This advanced technology will be applied at the 2022 World Cup. IFAB also decided to continue the rule of changing 5 players in each match in all top tournaments.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino also announced the increase in the number of substitutes per game. This rule started in 2020 because of the Covid-19 pandemic. The entire football community highly appreciates the number of substitutes per game. He said that after the annual meeting of the IFAB committee, experts would decide to introduce the “semi-automatic offside” detection feature at Qatar World Cup.
Introducing Semi-automatic Offside Technology
FIFA chief referee Pierluigi Collina is confident about the new technology implementation at the Qatar World Cup. However, this is a challenging decision to implement new technology in the biggest football festival on the planet. Because FIFA took several tests to implement the latest technology for an offside decision. As a result, FIFA can make a quick decision. And FIFA can successfully reduce controversy over implementing offside decisions in top matches.
How Semi-automatic Offside Technology Works
Everyone is interested to know how semi-automatic offside technology works. Basically, the system monitors 29 data points on the players’ limbs. This monitor creates a 3D model of the field. However, the referee also reviews the VAR result. Football Association (FA) chief executive Mark Bullingham says more than every game, the system record 8 million location data points. FIFA tested this new technology at the last year’s FIFA Arab Cup in Doha (Qatar) and the Club World Cup in February. The above system is called “semi-automatic” because the referee still makes the final decision on an offside award.
Introducing a Permanent Five-man Substitute Rule
At the beginning of this article, we talked about another rule regarding substitutes. At June 13 FIFA meeting, the committee agreed that now every team can change five players in a game. IFAB said that teams can now sign 15 substitutes on the bench instead of 12.
Finally, Insights
The IFAB said that we can use test the feedback of carrying body cameras by referees to protect against the growing number of attacks on football’s “kings of the field”. IFAB also added that there is a lack of respect and safety for referees. Members have agreed to establish initiatives to address these issues. In addition, an IFAB statement said football referees should make trials with cameras. The IFAB has also suggested more testing to limit the impact of head injuries on players. Because of the football head, many players have dementia and Parkinson’s disease later in life.
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