The big nights at Celtic Park are set to return as the club are once again in the Champions League and will be playing six matches with a brand new technology [ESPN].
VAR isn’t set to be introduced to Scottish football until after the winter break but the Hoops will be under a different form of tech come matchday one of the Champions league.
The new gadget which is also set to be used at the World Cup later this year is Fifa’s Semi-Automated Offside Technology (SAOT).
Here's the key 3D animation for the Semi-Automated Offside Technology which will be used in the Champions League. It's:
– Automated by AI, no manual line drawing by the VAR
– Clear and easy to understand, like goal-line tech
– Issues of camera angle and perspective are removed pic.twitter.com/7viOAFtCUl— Dale Johnson (@DaleJohnsonESPN) August 3, 2022
This will be used as a support tool for match officials to help them make faster and more accurate offside decisions.
At the centre of this will be the match ball that will be used as there is a sensor in the centre of the ball that will send data from the point which the ball leaves the players foot 100 times faster per second than conventional broadcasts and optical tracking.
Around each stadium there will be a total of twelve dedicated tracking cameras mounted that will be able to track the ball and twenty-nine points on the body of each individual player fifty times per second which will give a clear indication of what way their body moves and at what specific point.
Artificial intelligence will be used to process this data of where the ball and the player is to make a real time call on whether there is an offside decision.
There are constant alerts being processed through to the VAR room that will alert match officials and will allow them to make the call by checking each form of data.
To be transparent as possible with supporters, a replay animation will be displayed on screen within the stadium and television to show how the decision has been made.
There will likely be trial and error with this technology with toenail decisions being made for offside. As of yet, there is yet to be a piece of VAR technology that has pleased everyone so Celtic fans will hope that it is used to their benefit.
