MLS Could Be First Soccer League to Use Goal DetectingTechnology
By Matt Barbour
Major League Soccer Commissioner Don Garber stated this week that he hopes to have goal line technology in place throughout the league later this summer. Implementation of either Sony’s Hawkeye, a camera-based system already used by tennis and cricket, or GoalRef, which uses a magnetic field and a special ball (with a phoenix feather in it, I presume) would make MLS the first league in the world to have a goal verification system. And it’s about damn time.
Anybody who watched the 2010 World Cup saw replay after replay of a wicked shot by Frank Lampard of England that hit the bottom of the crossbar, deflected almost straight down but well across the goal line, and then back out into the field of play. In real-time this happened in a couple of seconds, so you can forgive the referee for not having the superhuman vision it would have required to see the ball cross the line live. But when there are dozens of HD cameras detailing every movement on the pitch from multiple angles, it is inevitable that obvious, egregious errors will be seen. It gives the sport a black eye when these errors are immediately and clearly visible to millions of people, except of course for the officials that have no access to replays. And the missed Lampard goal is far from being a rare, isolated incident in soccer.
FIFA (the international body that governs soccer) has been much like Major League Baseball in that they have been inexplicably slow to embrace technology. Each has used the same worn-out arguments of “leaving the human element in the game” or ” not slowing the action down” or simply because it is “against tradition”. All of those excuses ring very hollow with fans who just want the calls to be right. Baseball, to their credit, did relent a few seasons ago and allow replay on home run calls, but there are many other close plays that and up getting called incorrectly. Nobody needs to tell former Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga the impact missed calls can have on an imperfect game. But Soccer in particular should have long ago been a pioneer in technology, as goals are often very precious in a given match and the consequences of a missed call can determine the outcome of game.
So while I applaud Don Garber and MLS’ willingness to be at the forefront of the introduction of long overdue technology to the sport, I also believe that it is not enough. MLS recently announced that all their players in this year’s All Star game will be tracked utilizing Adidas’ miCoach system. The very clever technology will have a chip in each player’s shoe that gives real time data about their movements throughout the game. While it is intended to give feed back along the lines of work rate, tactical positioning, and stamina, I see the opportunity for a much different application.
If the Adidas and goal line technologies were combined, where every player on the pitch had the same tracking device in their cleats along with the ball itself, it would seem to be a fairly easy proposition to make offside an automated call. I will give assistant referees a ton of credit for very often getting what can be an insanely difficult call to make correct, but again, the times where a missed call directly impacts the result of the match far outweighs all of the correct ones. And even if the outcome isn’t affected, anytime a perfectly good goal is not awarded (or what should be an illegal one is), it diminishes the integrity of the game.
But first things first, let’s hope that this indeed does come to pass and that FIFA subsequently embraces the technology for all major competitions and leagues. The game will be better for it.
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