Premier League clubs fear that semi-automated offside technology may be delayed once again, with some believing it may not be introduced this season after all.
Martyn Ziegler reports for The Times that the Premier League’s introduction of semi-automated offside technology has been delayed until 2025 at the earliest, and some club figures believe it may not be introduced at all this season.
Clubs have been informed that failures in the system being 100% accurate are behind the delays, with occasional “black spots” being identified in testing when lots of bodies are around the ball.
It’s expected that clubs will be given an update on the results of testing at a meeting on Friday.
Years after semi-automated offside technology was first introduced to top-level football, all 20 Premier League clubs finally voted to bring in the technology earlier in 2024.
The vote was unanimous, but the league didn’t commit to introducing the technology until after one of the autumn international breaks – meaning either September, October, or November.
They missed that deadline, pushing the introduction back until the new year, and it seems there are now fears they’ll miss their new deadline too.
The frustration for fans is that the current system is not even close to 100% accurate. It has led to many errors, including a Brentford goal against Arsenal that should have been disallowed.
The VAR on that occasion forgot to check the relevant player, an issue the automated system would not have.
The current system is also slow and reliant on a person manually identifying the correct frame that the ball was played.
FIFA’s semi-automated offside technology uses a chip in the ball to identify the kick point, whilst the Champions League uses an AI method. Both would be far more accurate than a person manually looking at a screen and clicking the frames forward.
For now, that manual system is the one the Premier League has decided we’re stuck with, and that may not change before next summer.
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