FIFA wants to revolutionize VAR for the next World Cup

The VAR is increasingly established in competitions and it's rare not to see it in some, like the Nations League. And despite the criticism, the future of the tool is not in taking a step back and returning to the situation before, but in taking it to more tournaments (There is talk of a more minimalist and economical VAR for more modest competitions) and improve its functionality in purely technological aspects.

FIFA has asked different companies technologies and providers of video arbitration to improve their software for the Qatar World Cup in 2022. The aim is to make offside interventions more reliable and faster. To do this, work is done so that the offside are traced semi-automatically and that it is the tool itself that scans the image and the bodies of the players at all times to determine almost instantly if they are in an irregular position or are online .

Hawk-eye, VAR supplier company in FIFA, UEFA and major league competitions (Spain, England, Germany …) He has been working on this software in recent years and he would like to present it and make the first tests in official competition from 2021.

An aspiration shared by FIFA, as it recently admitted in a statement: “After initial demonstrations of the capabilities of this new technology, three VAR providers are interested in the next phase of development, which had to be postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but which should take place as soon as possible during the next year. The goal of this development phase is to further improve the algorithms of the systems based on a collection of data sets from hundreds of different offside incidents. “