THE USE of technology to help rule on whether a ball has crossed the goalline moved a step closer yesterday when the International Football Association Board, the game’s lawmakers, agreed that technical research should be pursued with a view to incorporating suitable devices into the game’s rules .
The FA chief executive Brian Barwick, who hosted the IFAB meeting in Manchester, said: “We all believe goalline technology is the right way forward, and there is a general consensus on that.”
Following experiments with different detection systems in Italy’s Serie A and at Fifa junior tournaments, enthusiasm for a system that will rule on goalline controversies has grown. Television camerawork has become so sophisticated that the difficulties facing referees and their assistants in judging goalline decisions is emphasised in one league or another across the globe almost every week.
Earlier this year, Manchester United were involved in their second high-profile controversy in as many seasons, when a header from Nemanja Vidic was ruled out by the assistant referee during the FA Cup tie against Portsmouth.
Television footage showed the ball at least half a metre over the line before it was cleared by Pedro Mendes. Mendes himself “scored” a goal against United for Tottenham at Old Trafford in 2005 that Roy Carroll “saved” from well behind the line. The officials found in the United keeper’s favour only to be proved wrong by video replays.
Most famously, there is the case of 1966, when on the way to a hat-trick in the World Cup final, Geoff Hurst struck the crossbar and the ball bounced down on the goalline. The goal was, of course, given to England.
The IFAB have laid down strict guidelines for companies developing the equipment to monitor goalline activity.
Yesterday they set the conditions any technology must meet to gain their and Fifa’s eventual approval. They will insist that any system is foolproof; that the technology may only be concerned with goalline decisions; that the ‘goal’ or ‘no-goal’ signal to the referee has to be instant, so as to prevent disruption of the flow of the game; that the signal would be communicated solely to the match officials.
The IFAB do not want to follow the path of television umpiring decisions in cricket, which have become their own dramatic cliff-hangers. Football, the thinking, goes, is a sport with a different pace, and they do not want it pausing for second opinions.
Aspects of the technology, though, may borrow from other sports. Difficult line decisions in horse-racing and athletics are assisted by technology, and the developers of the HawkEye equipment used in cricket and tennis have worked with the English Premiership on a system for goalline decisions in football.
German engineers have also developed technology which uses a microchip inside the ball to detect whether or not it has crossed the line.
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