Page 2: No robo-referee

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Back to the technology itself, which ultimately forms the foundation of the future data blessing: Without the SAOT, an assistant referee will have to search for the decisive frames himself if offside is suspected and draw lines in them manually in order to assess the positions of the players relative to each other and to the ball. Critics have complained that the purely video-based system does not provide sufficiently precise data to determine the exact time of the pass and the player coordinates for technical reasons alone: The refresh rate of 50 frames per second is simply not sufficient for this, they said. And scientists at the University of Bath were able to prove that people set the time of play on average 132 milliseconds too late. In a dynamic game like soccer, the situation can change completely during this period of time.

Particularly in close constellations, the entire procedure from suspicion to decision was quite slow. According to the soccer governing body, an average of 70 seconds elapsed before a decision was made in classic VAR, but in extreme cases it could be 5 minutes. Not even soccer fans need that many long breaks to get chips and drinks. With the new method, it should only take 15 to 25 seconds. According to FIFA, the time cannot be reduced any further, even though the SAOT delivers the image material in question within 5 seconds. However, this must always be viewed by a human because the technology can only identify offside positions, but cannot interpret every subtlety of the rules.

It is also partly a statistical, prediction-based system that is unlikely to work reliably in every turbulent match situation. FIFA did not answer our questions about technical details such as the training data and algorithms used, which is why we were only able to understand the rough functionality and potential weaknesses of the SAOT based on research work and publicly available material from the companies involved.

Recognize offside position

To recognize an offside position, the system must essentially answer the following key questions: Where is the ball, and when exactly was it played? Which team does the offside player belong to? Where are the other players of the own and opposing team, or more precisely: their goal-scoring body parts?

The new VAR technology can check the first three requirements independently, while the last one requires a trained referee's eye.