By Andrew Warshaw
February 5 – FIFA have confirmed that goal-line technology will definitely be on the agenda at next month’s meeting of the game’s lawmakers – despite opposition from UEFA President Michel Platini.
Next week, football’s world governing body will conduct tests into 10 different systems ahead of the International Football Association Board (IFAB) meeting in Wales on March 5.
The Zurich-based research institution EMPA will carry out the tests between February 7-13 behind closed doors, with each system having to demonstrate they can relay any decision to referees within one second.
If approved by the IFAB – the game’s rule-makers comprising FIFA and the four British national associations – goal-line technology could be introduced as an experiment in selected competitions.
Hawk-Eye, the system operating in cricket and tennis, is expected to be one of those tested, the company having spent years trying to convince FIFA that it is easily adaptable to football.
Others likely to be involved include Adidas/Cairos, whose system involves a microchip inside the ball, plus Swiss watch firms Longines and Tag Heuer.
The IFAB meeting will also hear results of the ongoing experiment of having an extra assistant referee behind each goal-line, used by UEFA in the Champions League and Europa League and a pet project of Platini.
UEFA want the practise to be used at the Euro 2012 finals but the IFAB are unlikely to give the go-ahead to two different systems at the same time.
To bring in goal-line technology at top competitive level, they would almost certainly have to ditch Platini’s human alternative.
Convesrely, if Platini gets his way, any kind of scientific device will be restored to the back-burner despite FIFA President Sepp Blatter’s U-turn after the World Cup in South Africa when he pledged that the time had come to give goalline technology another chance.
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