A new hyper-accurate technology, and referees' eternal quest for objectivity.

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The offside rule, which requires attacking players to be behind either the ball or the last defender, is a rule that sounds objective, but has led to a lot of questionable calls, partly because it can only be judged from an individual perspective. Until now. Meet the new “semi-automated AI offsides technology” at the 2022 World Cup.

This technology relies on a sensor in the ball that relays its position on the field 500 times a second, and 12 motion tracking cameras mounted underneath the roof of the stadium that use machine learning to track 29 points in players’ bodies. In other words, FIFA is mo-capping players, just without the funny gray suits. And the whole system will alert referees when a player is offside. If you’ve been watching the World Cup, you may have also seen the motion tracking information being used to create an immediate 3D replay.

This system seems like it could be capable of eliminating “bad” offside calls, or maybe bad calls altogether - but its new precision will inevitably impact gameplay no matter what. And the first World Cup to feature it will show us exactly how.

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