Football News : Quicker, less expensive' offside VAR to tested at Arab Cup

A semi-automated offside technology will be tested at the FIFA Arab Cup 2021 that will be held in Qatar between November 30th and December 18th.

FIFA's Chairman of the Referees Committee said that the new software will hopefully reduce the lenght of the VAR's checks for offsides and will make them more accurate.

"The technology is based on limb tracking technology or some call it skeletal tracking technology" explained Johannes Holzmuller, Director of Football Technology and Innovation.

"So that means that we collect up to 29 data points per player 50 times every second and then our software is processing this data and in case of an offside offence an automated alert is the sent to the Video Operations Room" he added.

The final decision, however, will always be delegated to the officials in the VAR room and to the referee.