January 11- The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) has moved to strengthen its referee assessment tools at the 2023 Asian Cup that kicks off Friday as part of its commitment to develop world-class match officials.
Implemented for the first time at a major tournament, the Refereeing Online Platform gives referee assessors a range tools including a centralised platform for assessors to complete and submit their Referee Assessment Reports, and makes available full match videos that will enable the creation of incident clips and development of teaching material within the platform.
The platform will enable the AFC to assess and track referee performance while referees will be able to use the learnings to improve their officiating.
The AFC has made it a mission to raise professional standards within its match officials and at the Asian Cup will be introducing Video Assistant Referees (VAR) for all matches for the first time, as well as semi-automated offside technology that debuted at the 2022 world cup.
The system was fine-tuned through offline tests during the AFC U17 Asian Cup Thailand 2023.
With comment worldwide on the requirement to improve refereeing standards, in particular with the interpretation of VAR, the AFC said that “the newly upgraded system strives to establish a fairer grading mechanism, to ensure that Match Officials receive a more accurate evaluation reflecting their overall performance on the pitch.”
The AFC said it will make the referee assessments available to referee assessors within national associations.
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