Chelsea to become first Premier League club to trial ‘robot referees’ at Club World Cup

The new technology will be trialed at the Club World Cup

Chelsea will become the first Premier League team to trial the new 'robot referees' which will be used by FIFA at the upcoming Club World Cup in Abu Dhabi. The technology will aim to make automatic offside decisions within half a second in a bid to end the lengthy delays that sometimes occur with VAR. With the use of 12 cameras to help track the movements of all players and the ball, the technology will use skeletons of players through 29 different data points which can be accessed up to 50 times per second to make the correct offside call. FIFA’s football technology and innovation director Johannes Holzmuller explained how the system worked. "When the ball is played, the real-time AI software can send a signal automatically to the VAR," he said in November. "We will have a committed assistant VAR who can process the offside data and help determine if the player deemed to be offside was active and interfering with play, so they can swiftly validate and confirm the decision." Holzmuller then added that he believes the technology has all the fundamentals to be a success, saying: "We strongly believe that access to this new data source can positively impact the game by optimising decision-making processes and increasing objectivity. "However, we are only at the beginning of this development journey and possible use cases need to be tested thoroughly to assess the capabilities with a view to eventual implementation." FIFA have plans to implement the technology at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, with the Club World Cup the second in a series of trials, following a successful period at the Arab Cup. Related links:

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