Offside is no longer entirely a winger's issue. Yes, because even Serie A, after strong instructions from IFAB to avoid wasting time in favor of play and spectacle, seems to have made great strides in the refereeing situation that, as is known, has always generated the most controversy: the offside.
In the case of Roma-Atalanta, in fact, we saw a moment when Wesley, positioned wide on the wing, receives the ball and at the same moment the referee whistles for offside, without the winger even seeing it and without raising the flag: but how is that possible?
All thanks to the new and improved version of SAOT — an acronym for Semi-Automated Offside Technology — already used during the last World Cup, which has the ability to send a real-time signal via headset to the entire referee team when an offside situation is identified.
In this way, it is essential to speed up communication time. Furthermore, in the absence of a clear goal opportunity, the game stops immediately compared to what happened a few years ago, avoiding players running around in vain and further speeding up the game.
How SAOT used to improve semi-automated offside technology works
Serie A has followed FIFA's lead by introducing a 3D VAR system for the first time. It is an evolution of the semi-automated offside system, designed to make the decision-making process even faster and more efficient.
In this way, a real-time audio signal is sent to the referee team indicating a possible offside position, reducing communication time. The clearer and more immediate display of the episode is made possible by automatically generated virtual replays, capable of integrating even the main broadcast cameras, made available shortly after the episode.
The objective is to provide match officials with increasingly advanced tools, improve the quality of decisions and make offside incidents more understandable to the public. A way to help match officials use all this data to identify infringements, assess possible sanctions and reduce the margin of uncertainty.
Just as happened with Wesley, the combination of limb tracking and ball tracking data allows the technology to provide automatic offside alerts to VARs in the video review room whenever the ball is picked up by an attacking player who is in an offside position at the moment the ball is kicked by a teammate. This way, the VAR room can review the proposed decision before it is communicated to the officials on the pitch.
