The Premier League has agreed to introduce semi-automated offside technology (SAOT) from next season, with it anticipated that the technology will be ready to be introduced after one of the autumn international breaks.
SAOT will provide quicker and consistent placement of the virtual offside line, based on optical player tracking, and will produce high-quality broadcast graphics to ensure an enhanced in-stadium and broadcast experience for supporters, as Howard Webb discusses what the new technology will bring.
On the latest episode of "Match Officials Mic'd Up", PGMOL Chief Refereeing Officer, Howard Webb, has spoken about how it will affect the game.
"We mentioned earlier about the importance of efficiency and semi-automated offside, which we will see coming into the Premier League next season [and] will help in that respect," Webb said.
"It will make us quicker in a lot of situations involving tight offsides. Our defenders are really skilful at stepping up at the right time to play people offside, but also attackers are skilled at timing their runs as well. So we do have a lot of really tight offside situations in the Premier League.
"The assistants are also very good at making judgments in real-time, but, of course, they still need to be checked by the VAR and often players are leaning and there's maybe distance between the defenders and the attackers.
"So, at the moment we're using software, dropping lines from players' body positions, which takes time to do in a diligent way. Semi-automated offsides will speed that process up. There are still going to be some situations when there's a lot of players in close proximity, where we'll have to go through the existing system, if you like.
"But in many, many cases it [SAOT] will speed up the offside process because we won't have to place those lines. It'll be done for us by the software. So we are looking forward to making use of that to speed the game up."
As to why it is called semi-automated and not "fully automated", Webb explained: "Semi-automated suggests to us where the offside line is, but we still have to check the kick point - make sure the computer selected the right one, make sure it's selected the right players, because we have to recognise who is the ... the defender that we're interested in, make sure it's identified the right players. And it's just like a validation really, of what the computer is suggesting to us.
"There's no indication [from SAOT] to the on-field officials as yet as to whether or not a player's offside. That might be something that comes down the track, where they get some information in real-time, which will prevent the delaying of flags. But that's some way off.
"But we're keeping a really close eye on anything that makes us more accurate, more efficient, and that benefits the game in a way that we think the VAR has overall in the last four to five years."
