Technology in Football: How Technology Is Shaping the Future of Football
Almost 160 years have passed since the first set of universal football regulations were drafted, and football has advanced absurdly. Football will have no choice but to use technology as society increasingly relies on it.
Technology and Training
The most obvious way technology will be employed in football is in training, where it will improve players and help them reach new heights. Numerous tools are already used to gather enormous amounts of data, including heart rate monitors, GPS trackers, sophisticated monitoring and video systems, apps to track official games, and drone-recorded training sessions.
Enhancing performance can result from information analysis. Technology can help optimize training regimens, establish game strategy, and even help spot abnormalities, patterns, or changes in player performance that may suggest an impending injury. One example is the German national team's use of Adidas smart jerseys, which track distance, speed, and pulse.
Predicting Injuries
One can employ artificial intelligence, which can forecast when an injury might occur or maintain a player in peak condition, which is crucial for identifying marginal performance increases. For instance, the artificial intelligence tool Zone7, which gathers information from wearables, fitness tests, and medical profiles to recognize players who may be injured, is already being used by more than 50 clubs worldwide.
Coaches can use the system's green, yellow, and red signs to determine whether to reduce training intensity for a certain player based on their daily risk level.
Soccer Goal Line Technology
Goal-line technology is desperately needed in soccer, especially since there are so many instances where the TV replay might show incorrect calls made by the referee, such as whether the ball crossed the goal line or not and if the goal was awarded. This can, however, be a disappointment to those users on casino websites placing bets on teams to score. Similar technology has been effectively used in American football, tennis, and cricket, and the spectators have generally embraced it.
Semi-Automated Offside Technology
Following successful experiments at prior FIFA tournaments, semi-automated offside technology was implemented for the first time in soccer history for the FIFA World Cup 2022 in Qatar. To precisely determine in real time if offside has occurred, this offside decision-making technology uses 12 cameras positioned around the field.
These cameras track multiple data points on the ball and each player at 50 times per second. Additionally, the technology uses a signal from a sensor inside the ball to calculate each player's exact position on the pitch. The video match officials get this data and can forward it to the central referee.
VAR - Video Assistant Referee
At the 2018 World Cup in Russia, FIFA employed video replays, also known as Video Assistant Referee, or VAR, to help with referee decisions for the first time. This came after a few years of successful trials. Reviewable calls fall into four categories: goals, red card decisions, penalty judgments, and identity errors when awarding cards. Reviewing video replays of the event, the video assistant referee can identify obvious mistakes and use a wireless radio to communicate that information to the central referee, who wears a headset.
Summing it Up
Technology is developing at an alarming rate. Thus, it will soon be tested to see if it can enhance the world's biggest and most cherished sport.
However, there are drawbacks and resistance to it, and implementing it on this scale might take a lot of work. Nevertheless, football players, teams, commentators, and fans will all have thrilling times in the upcoming ten years.