Sensors inside the ball twice ruined the Belgian’s celebration.
Lukaku, Belgium vs Croatia
Photo: EFE
By:
Futbolred Editorial
June 17, 2024, 08:30 p.m. m.
If you are also wondering how it is that in Euro 2024 it takes just moments to catch hands, offsides and controversial plays and how it is that they discovered a minimal, but existing, friction from Lukaku in Belgium’s 1-0 defeat against Slovakia, the answer is what many find shocking: technology in football.
This and more controversial plays are now resolved more easily thanks to an amazing development that is sewn to the ball, the Adidas Fussballliebe.
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It is worth saying that, like many, it is made with recycled polyester and has an embossed structure that gives it precision and avoids seams, thermally sealed and with the colors of the 24 participating nations. Until then, nothing radically different from Qatar 2022. But what makes it unique is the sensor that sends precise data to the referees in real time through the system called Connected Ball.
End to the controversies?
The Euro ball combines player position data with Artificial Intelligence (AI), the perfect ally for the semi-automated offside technology (SAOT) already used in UEFA.
This SAOT allows the VAR to determine offside situations quickly and very precisely because it uses ten specialized cameras that are in each stadium and that track 29 body points on each player. This has been used since 2022 in the Champions League, but what is new is that the Connected Ball immediately identifies the point of contact with the ball of the offside situations analyzed.
This is how the Fussballliebe works
This is how the Fussballliebe, Euro 2024 ball, works
Soccer video
Doubtful hands
Connected Ball technology can also help video referees identify each individual touch of the ball, including whether or not they are touched by hand, reducing the time spent resolving handball incidents and penalties. It was like this, for example, that it took so little time to call the referee in the Belgium vs Slovakia duel to check the monitor and annul Lukaku’s second goal due to an almost imperceptible handball from a teammate before the score.
It is worth saying that the famous Goal-Line Technology (GLT), which has been used since 2016 and is a software that tracks the ball within the area and takes a second to determine if the entire circumference exceeded the line, emitting a vibration to the clock of each referee, is also favored by this new technology, which includes the general plan of the field and replicates the images of all the available cameras in case of controversy.
