Sports

FIFA ready to use automated offside calls in 2022 World Cup: Wenger

  • Wenger, however, said he supported the 'automated' offside technology, which directly informs a referee's assistant if an incident is offside.
Published April 8, 2021

FIFA will be ready to implement an automated system for offside calls at next year's World Cup in Qatar, Arsene Wenger said.

The game's rulemaker, IFAB, said last month it was continuing to review the offside law and planned to test technology that would allow for 'semi-automatic' decisions to limit the need for long waits for VAR reviews.

Wenger, however, said he supported the 'automated' offside technology, which directly informs a referee's assistant if an incident is offside.

"On average, the time we have to wait is around 70 seconds, sometimes 1 minute and 20 seconds... It is so important because we see many celebrations are cancelled after that for marginal situations."

Last month, former Netherlands forward Marco van Basten called on football's lawmakers to consider scrapping the offside rule, saying the game would be better off without it.

Comments

Comments are closed.