The football revolution is coming! Semi-automatic offside comes into play today. How will it work?

Are you satisfied with the way VAR works? No? Well, today, another gadget called SAOT comes into play. Semi-automatic offside technology will be used for the first time today at the Olympic Stadium in Helsinki for the UEFA Super Cup between Real Madrid and Frankfurt.

UEFA and FIFA have long been pushing for a reduction in refereeing decision times, and so they have come up with SAOT technology. The aim is to make decisions on one of football’s most important rules, offside, as accurately and, most importantly, as quickly as possible.

What is and how does semi-automatic offside work?

SAOT is a multi-camera technology that tracks the precise movement of players’ limbs and determines the exact moment of the pass.

There are 10 to 12 cameras that detect 29 points on the player’s body, 50 times per second, and the software analyzes the data in real time, perfectly calculating the moment of the pass and the position of the players.

Not only that, it does it so quickly that it inserts grids to highlight offside, then automatically sends it to the VAR station, which has the answer to give to the referee in cases of offside, which are the most. And the time? It’s certainly much faster than today,” explained former referee and current FIFA director of referees Pierluigi Collina.

Offside will thus be absolutely confirmed and trusted in these cases. This will be helped by the aforementioned cameras, which will record 29 points on the player’s body and the movement of the ball. At the same time, the technology will be able to create a 3D image confirming the offside, which could be shown on screens in stadiums and in TV broadcasts.

The first test

It is the offside decision that is the most difficult in football. Modern football is constantly moving forward, getting faster and faster and the eyes of the linesman are often no longer enough.

That’s why the VAR system came into play, but even that is often questioned because there is still the human factor at play. SAOT technology should therefore reduce all errors to make football rules as accurate as possible.

The system will be tested for the first time tonight at 9pm in the UEFA Super Cup between Real Madrid and Frankfurt, a match hosted at Helsinki Stadium.

If all goes according to plan, SAOT technology would already be working officially at the World Cup in Qatar, which starts in November. After that, it would be applied to league football.

Source: UEFA, FIFA