Questions Surround Football's Most Controversial Referee

Have computers taken over world's biggest sport? 

Doha, Friday,

There's a small publishing industry that lives off rather far-fetched comparisons between philosophy and football. But the introduction of the Video Assistant Referee has made people ask big questions about the game. Take an apparently simple issue like, when is a ball on the field or not on the field? To simple folk, this should have an equally simple answer. But as everyone discovered during the game between Japan and Spain, when Japan's second goal, scored by Ao Tanaka, was allowed to stand after a lengthy VAR check, what the computer says and what "it looks like" are two different things. A particular photo settled the matter when it showed that, yes, the ball had been physically sitting on the grass beyond the line when kicked into the penalty area - yet technically it was still in play as a tiny portion of the ball was hovering over the line.

In tennis, players have been known to shout "chalk dust" when serves or other shots were called out - meaning that the ball should count as being 'in' as it had hit the line causing the chalk to fly up. In such cases, the ball's physical contact with the line is crucial. That's, well common sense. But in the World Cup, under FIFA's new electronic system, balls are "on the line" when they are actually not in contact, indeed sitting beyond it. That introduces a gap between an abstract rule and common sense.

There's another problem with such things, which is the old philosophical one about boundaries. (The issue even has a name: the Sorites paradox.) Let's agree that a ball should count as still on the pitch as long as a bit of it is over the line. There's still an issue about what we mean by a bit. Is it a tenth of the ball? A hundredth? A thousandth?

FIFA sort of avoid some of the philosophical issues by saying that the video assistant referee (VAR) system is a support tool and humans, the on-field officials, will ultimately decide.

VAR was first used at the 2018 FIFA World Cup and the technology is now very sophisticated. To assess whether the ball crosses the goal line, for example, the system uses 14 high-speed cameras mounted on the catwalk of the stadium and under the roof. The data from these cameras is used to create a 3D animation to visualize the decision and this is shown to the fans on TV as well as on a giant screen inside the stadium. Officially, all this information is just helping the referee in making their final decision, yet once the system speaks, it is very hard for the referee not to follow.

But the wider issue is that the Video Referee system highlights the exact wording of the "rules" that it follows.

Take the question of "has the ball crossed the line?" 

In association football, a goal is scored if the whole of the ball crosses the line between the goalposts and under the crossbar. All of the ball must pass all of the goal line. The exact language is very complicated. If any part of the ball is still on a plane with the goal line when it is saved, there is no goal awarded. If the base of the ball is well inside the goal, but a fraction of the ball is still over the line, then it is "no goal".

In American football, by contrast, any of the ball breaking the plane of the goal is a score. Likewise in baseball, the ball need only catch the edge of the strike zone to count. In Association Football, however, the ball must completely cross the line to be counted as a goal.

One thing that caught fans out in the early days of goal-line technology was the fact that the goal is measured at the line on the ground, which doesn't necessarily square up with the posts and crossbar. Due to tension on the net, it is not uncommon for the goalposts to be bent a little backwards, which can give the impression that a ball may not be fully in the goal when in fact it is.

Confusing? But this is all more straightforward than the offside issue, which the Video Assistant Referee is often asked to rule on. Here, the VAR system accurately shows where players were, but other subtle questions are left for the officials. It's one thing to let automated systems make incredibly fine spacial distinctions, but in the process it throws undue emphasis on the exact wording of the rules. The relevant part of FIFA's "Offside" - Law 11 - states:

"A player in an offside position at the moment the ball is played or touched by a team-mate is only penalized on becoming involved in active play."

But then the notion of "active play" has to be set out. And so the rules say "active play" means gaining an advantage by playing the ball or interfering with an opponent when it has rebounded or been deflected off the goalpost, crossbar, or an opponent - or even a match official!

By contrast, a player who is technically "offside" when receiving the ball from an opponent who deliberately plays the ball, including by deliberate handball, is not considered to have gained an advantage, unless it was a deliberate save by any opponent. The "Offside" rule is notoriously complicated - even referees don't seem to always understand it!

Take the recent controversy surrounding Antoine Griezmann's goal against Tunisia for example. After a difficult game for France, Tunisia were winning 1-0 but in the very last seconds of the match, Griezmann scored a goal that would have saved France from suffering its first World Cup defeat since 2014. Yet, after the final whistle had been blown, the VAR team contacted the referee, asking him to review the goal, as they thought it was "Offside".

The actual legality of doing this is questionable as VAR cannot be used after the play has restarted. But worse it seems that the goal wasn't even offside! You see, Griezmann WAS indeed offside, but not at the time of scoring, instead, a Tunisian player caught the ball and kicked it backwards towards Griezmann who had moved back "Onside" and who then shot it into the goal…

Maybe let's not get into the details. The point is, the video may show where people are, but it still leaves a lot of questions unanswered. Maybe the trouble is, the technology has a tendency of cutting short thinking that really ought to have been part of the decision-making process!