World Cup: offside or not? How this connected balloon will try to solve the problem forever

We put an end to the dispute … about offside. The World Cup in Qatar, which starts this Sunday, will showcase cutting-edge technology for modern football. Tested in 2018 during the World Cup in Russia and adopted in all professional championships since then, Video Arbitration Assistance (VAR) is logically back in the ranks. After a somewhat mixed review. Because I did not know how to completely solve the sore problem of offside. This time it will be helped by an innovation that is closer to the players: a connected ball, covered with sensors and augmented with artificial intelligence.

Baptized Al Rilha (journey, in Arabic), is the result of several years of research and development by the German startup Kinexon and Adidas, the official supplier of the World Championships for half a century. A miniature inertial unit is built into it, that is, a whole galaxy of ultra-precise motion sensors. “They are located in the center of the ball and send data 500 times per second to 26 antennas spread across the field,” explains Oliver Hundaker, director of product development at Adidas.

“This lets you know where the ball is, down to two milliseconds, to help you make the right decision in case of offside,” he says. Because this very precise data is sent to the video arbitrators’ viewing room. They will be combined with player positions captured by 12 cameras and analyzed by powerful algorithms. Result: There is no longer any doubt about the position of the ball carrier in relation to the offside line.

The warning will automatically be sent to the men in black installed in the cockpit. “It will no longer be possible to compete while the VAR remains in a moot state, depending on where the video arbitrator stops the image, the quality of the images and the few centimeters the action is played on,” says Said Ennjimi, a former international judge and consultant for Équipe TV . “This eliminates human error, which is part of the sporting principle, but you need to keep up with the times, especially since the stakes in the match are huge,” he notes.

The experiment will be completely invisible to the players, because the ball will have the same appearance and the same weight. “This technology has been rigorously tested in competition by professional teams and amateur clubs around the world, sometimes without being aware of it during blind tests,” says Oliver Hundaker of Adidas. The first matches of the competition will determine the potential – as well as the future – of this tied ball, which will still not be able to roll on all the courts of the world, because every championship has its own supplier.