The English Premier League Blog

After rejecting goal line technology last March,  FIFA are now ready to accept that goal-line technology must be introduced into the game of football.

Is it a goal or isn’t it – of course it is

With the whole world watching in South Africa,  FIFA was totally embarrassed when England’s Frank Lampard scored a goal against Germany that was then shown by the big screen videos to be about two foot over the line, but the “goal”  amazingly wasn’t given by the officials, who must have been asleep at the time.

That was one huge embarrassment in the world’s most popular sporting tournament,  which comes around only once every four years.

Sepp Blatter and his governing body are ready make a decisive move later this month in favor of introducing the new technology, and there is a two day meeting going on right now in Zurich, with 16 different submissions for technology solutions that will be able to tell without question,  when the ball has crossed the goal line.

Thank goodness for that.

FIFA  will have to decide which of the technology systems will be presented to the  annual business meeting of the International Football Association Board in Cardiff,  to take place on Wednesday, October 20th.

It seems that after the October meeting the next step will be to give formal approval and the new technology will become adopted at the full IFAB meeting on March 6th next year, back in Cardiff.

Currently UEFA is using additional assistants behind each goal in the European Champions League this season, but it appears that Blatter is finally ready for a system that takes human error out of the reckoning completely, and gives an instantaneous verdict on whether it’s a goal or not.

The potential technology solutions fall into three basic categories – computer chips in the ball, camera technology and the computer simulation system of the  “Hawkeye” technology that is currently used in both tennis and cricket.

It seems the favorite is to have chips embedded into the football, which has been developed by FIFA’s long-term partners Adidas. Yes they were the makers of that terrible Jabulani ball used in the World Cup.

The problem with the Hawkeye system, which has been used successfully in some other sports, is the delay in reaching a conclusion, and that will count against that specific technology.

It’s been a while coming, but anything that ensures there will no more huge embarrassments of the dominant world’s game, that we all witnessed South Africa, will be well worth it.

Comments welcome.