The International Football Association Board (IFAB) yesterday voted unanimously in favour of the new goal-line technology, leaving it up to individual football associations to decide whether to adopt it. FIFA has said it will adopt the technology to help solve disputes over critical goal decisions.
The goal-line technology, GoalRef and Hawk-Eye, will first be used at December’s Fifa Club World Cup, and at the 2013 Confederations Cup and 2014 World Cup if successful.
FIFA general secretary Jerome Valcke Jerome said they would now adopt the two different technology systems IFAB approved.
“The two systems approved will further be tested in different stadiums,” Jerom said.
The Hawk-Eye, set behind the goal line and penalty area, has an electrical cable that allows magnetic flow once the ball crosses it in the process reflecting data in the central computer systems “in a matter of micro-seconds.”
It has a system that works using six cameras focused on each goal to track the ball on the pitch. Its software uses “triangulation” to locate the ball’s exact location. Once the ball crosses the goal-line, the system sends an encrypted radio signal to the referee’s wristwatch to show a goal has been scored.
GoalRef uses a microchip implanted on the ball and low magnetic waves around the ball. The Hawk-eye system then detects changes in the magnetic field on or behind the goal-line once a ball is scored.
Through the new technology, the goals would be decided in situation where officials aren’t sure whether the ball crossed the goal line and in cases where the ball bounces down off the underside of the crossbar and is cleared away by an opponent.
Dan Ngulu of Futaa.com, Africa’s leading football site, told HumanIPO that the positive move by the football fraternity paves way for fairness in the sport.
‘‘We have had many cases where some decisions concerning goals have been made unfairly, the Lampard goal in 2010 world cup pitting England vs Germany that was denied by referee Jorge Larrionda,” he said.
Ngulu said: “Also in the just concluded Euro 2012,England eliminated Ukrain by a solitary goal. The decision by the referee to cancel Marko Devic goal was so harsh when John Terry cleared the ball it had already crossed the goal line.”
IFAB, a football governing body, comes up with laws governing soccer globally.
