Football: Semi-automated offside in Serie A from January, hunt for new ref chief
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
The optical tracking system has the aim of making offside calls faster and more accurate.
PHOTO: AFP
Follow topic:
MILAN – Semi-automated offside technology will be introduced to Serie A in January, the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) announced on Monday, as the country’s refereeing association searches for a new president following a drug scandal.
In a statement, FIGC said that the technology, developed by global governing body Fifa and used at the World Cup, will be deployed from the 20th round of matches on the last weekend of January after consultations with domestic refereeing association AIA.
Those fixtures, which include Serie A leaders Napoli hosting fierce rivals AS Roma, mark the second half of a league campaign, which gets under way again early next month following the World Cup and winter break.
The technology was trialled at February’s Club World Cup in Abu Dhabi and the 2021 Arab Cup before being used at the World Cup in Qatar
It utilises both dedicated and broadcast cameras around the stadium to give the exact position of players on the pitch, offering match officials precise information within seconds.
The optical tracking system has the aim of making offside calls faster and more accurate.
Offside decisions have continued to cause controversy in the video assistant referee (VAR) era in Italy, with one particularly strange case penalising Juventus against Salernitana back in September.
A VAR review had ruled out Arkadiusz Milik’s stoppage-time header, which would have given Juventus a 3-2 win. The VAR officials’ reason was that Juventus defender Leonardo Bonucci was offside and interfering with play.
Footage revealed later showed that Salernitana’s Antonio Candreva had kept everyone onside but as he was stood by the corner flag he was not spotted by the VAR officials.
The decision caused outrage not just at Juve but among football fans and pundits all over Italy, incredulous as to how the decision could have been made wrongly with so many cameras in place at the Allianz Stadium. AIA said at the time that the VAR officials did not have access to cameras which would have shown that Milik’s goal should have stood.
The announcement was made after Monday’s FIGC board meeting in which president Gabriele Gravina also said elections for a new AIA head would take place within 90 days after Alfredo Trentalange’s resignation on Sunday.
Trentalange stepped down under pressure from Gravina, who had threatened to put AIA under administration if he did not relinquish his post, following the arrest of the body’s chief prosecutor Rosario D’Onofrio for his alleged involvement in an international drug trafficking ring.
D’Onofrio was among dozens of people arrested in November, after which AIA said he had hid from them that he had been under house arrest for previous drug offences when he applied to be promoted to prosecutor. AFP
