VAR technology - what technology is used in football

Marwan AbuGhazaleh

16 Feb, 2024

VAR technology - what technology is used in football

As we see now, technology intervenes in various aspects of different areas of life, including business, medicine, task management, tool and product manufacturing technology, nutrition, and even sports, which is the target category in our article for today. In this article, we aim to discuss the role of technology in improving and developing the sport of football, and how it has contributed to making it the most popular and significant sport globally with a large audience.

technology in football

Football is not the same as it was 15 years ago, nor is it the same as it was before the year 2000. Technological advancements have improved the performance of this popular sport, which is practiced in every corner of the world, whether as national teams representing each country, or at the grassroots level in football clubs or even in the streets. Technology has increased the accuracy of playing football, making it a sport with strong rules and enhancing the precision in detecting errors, results, and collecting data. We will discuss various topics about the technology used in football and the organizations interested in its improvement and utilization to enhance the efficiency of playing football.

Technology used in football

Did you follow the 2022 FIFA World Cup held in Qatar? If you did, you would find that very modern and highly sensitive technology was used for monitoring and tracking, which made the World Cup from 2022 onwards more organized and effective. The matches were played cleanly without difficulty in identifying errors and obtaining more accurate results and information. Here are some well-known technologies that you may not know about:

VAR technology: Video Assistant Referee technology helps referees make the right decisions. It involves showing recorded videos of the same match during play to be reviewed if the referee finds it difficult to determine an error that occurred to one of the teams. The Video Assistant Referee requests the on-field referee to come and review the recorded video if there is difficulty in making a decision or if there is a contradiction in the referee's decision.
Vanishing spray: A substance used in football to ensure fair play, providing a temporary visual mark used by referees and players indicating the minimum distance one of the teams must stop at during a free kick, instead of determining the place of the ball itself. It prevents the attacking team from illegally moving the ball from its correct position. It was first used in 2013.
Goal-line technology (GLT): It helps determine whether goals are correctly awarded by determining whether the entire circumference of the ball has crossed the goal line or not.
Tracking devices: They come in various forms, such as systems of multiple cameras relying on optical technologies, local positioning systems, or satellite-based navigation systems.
Offside technology: This was advanced at the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. It consists of 12 cameras installed under the stadium roof, with up to 29 data points dedicated to each player, working at high speed up to 50 times to accurately calculate the players' positions. The data collected through this technology relies on points on the players' bodies to track offside.

Video Games and Football

Two widely known football games are FIFA and PES. Each year, a new version of the game is released, incorporating changes and transfers that have occurred to the players in real life into the game. Also, undoubtedly, improving the quality of graphics within the game and precision, and perhaps solving some errors that occurred in older versions. You can play any version you want as each version is within a separate application from the other versions. And certainly, there are some older versions that still receive updates to fix errors. As for the changes and transfers, they are only added to the latest version for each new year.

There is another series of football games presented by Konami since 1995, consisting of 18 different parts called eFootball, which was previously called Pro Evolution Soccer. It has been in fierce competition with FIFA and EA-SPORTS and is the second-largest video game series for football globally until 2020.

Who supports football

The biggest supporter of football is the International Federation of Association Football known as FIFA, founded in 1904 in Paris, France. Its headquarters is located in Switzerland, specifically in the city of Zurich. It is the coordinating body for the FIFA World Cup tournaments held every four years in a specific city around the world. You can visit the official FIFA page to learn more about it.

Also, several other global companies support football, especially in various world tournaments, such as sports apparel companies Adidas and Nike, which sponsor football. And other energy drink and telecommunications companies that broadcast matches for viewing on television worldwide.

Conclusion

What you should know in this article is that football is of great interest globally, and modern technology is used to keep up with the developments and improvements in this popular sport, which constantly evolves with the advancement of modern technology. Tools and equipment are added to make data collection, player performance analysis, error detection, and goal tracking better and more accurate, making the decision-making process by the referee effective and correct with minimal errors. Additionally, football has its own governing body, FIFA, which supports it as a significant sport, and it receives support and sponsorship from global companies providing what players need. We hope that the article has provided you with sufficient useful information.

VAR technology - what technology is used in football