Serie A to introduce semi-automated offside technology before World Cup

According to La Gazzetta dello Sport, Serie A will introduce a semi-automated offside technology before the Qatar 2022 to avoid errors like the one in Juventus–Salernitana.

The pink paper reports the new automated system will likely be launched in Italy’s top flight in October.

Serie A will be the first European league to adopt the semi-automated offside technology, which should avoid seeing errors like during Juventus-Salernitana when Arek Milik’s late winner was wrongfully disallowed

The goal was ruled out because Leonardo Bonucci was considered involved in active play, but VAR hadn’t spotted Antonio Candreva on the bottom left, keeping the Italy defender onside.

But how does the semi-automated offside work? The technology used by Serie A will be the same as Qatar 2022, which uses ’12 dedicated tracking cameras mounted underneath the roof of the stadium to track the ball and up to 29 data points of each individual player, 50 times per second, calculating their exact position on the pitch. The 29 collected data points include all limbs and extremities that are relevant for making offside calls,’ FIFA explained in July.

‘By combining the limb- and ball-tracking data and applying artificial intelligence, the new technology provides an automated offside alert to the video match officials inside the video operation room whenever the ball is received by an attacker who was in an offside position at the moment the ball was played by a team-mate.

‘Before informing the on-field referee, the video match officials validate the proposed decision by manually checking the automatically selected kick point and the automatically created offside line, which is based on the calculated positions of the players’ limbs. This process happens within a few seconds and means that offside decisions can be made faster and more accurately.’

According to Gazzetta, offsides will be spotted in circa 25 seconds thanks to the new system, while today, it takes around 70 seconds to check on a potential offside.

Lega Serie A President Lorenzo Casini and AIA’s chief Alfredo Trentalange will discuss introducing the new system during an ‘urgent meeting’ which should take place this week, reports Gazzetta.