Football representation Croatia she was defeated in a dramatic World Cup round of 16 match after her late goal was disallowed for offside.
The players of Portugal were better, who celebrated with a score of 2:1, but from the goals and excellent play of both teams in the second half, this game will be remembered much more precisely because of the aforementioned offside, which was awarded thanks to the sensor that is embedded in every ball used in the championship.
Official information says that this technology is in the official ballpark championships - and it is about the Trionda ball from the company "Adidas" - registered that the representative of Croatia, Igor Matanoviฤ, touched the ball before it reached Mario Paลกaliฤ, who was offside at that moment. Pasalic then passed the ball to his teammate Joลกko Guardiola, who scored a goal to make it 2:2, but that goal was canceled after checking with VAR technology.
The decision, of course, caused violent reactions among Croatian fans, but also among other football fans, many of whom believe that such a technologically advanced ball actually ruined the game of football.
Many wonder how the fact that Matanoviฤ touched the ball with his hair could have affected the game, and thus the offside, but the data that was read from the ball unequivocally showed that he had contact with the ball.
What does Zlatan Ibrahimovic say?
The legendary Zlatan Ibrahimoviฤ also protested against the referee's decision to disallow Croatia's goal:
"For me it's a clean goal! Football is about what actually happens on the pitch, and when I watched the video again, I clearly saw that the ball bounced off the Portuguese defender (Renata Veiga) before reaching the Croatian striker. That changes absolutely everything! If there's a deliberate touch or an obvious deflection of the ball by a defender that resets the phase of the game, then you can't penalize the striker for being in that position."
Zlatan particularly focused on the very purpose of the VAR system, which in North America began to "shape destinies and measure millimeters and percentages of touches" that cannot be seen with the naked eye.
"What does VAR even exist for? I guess to correct the obvious and cardinal mistakes of the referees, not to create even more chaos and controversy. I think they made a disastrous and completely wrong decision. Anyone who watched the game could see the contact of the Portuguese player before the ball reached Pasalic and Guardiola. In my opinion, the goal should have been awarded and Croatia deserved extra time."
How the sensor in the ball works
The International Federation of Football Associations, or Fifa, states that it is a sensor that operates at a frequency of 500 hertz (Hz). This means that this technology in all three dimensions records data on the movement, acceleration and rotation of the ball 500 times per second.
The sensor is located in the center of the ball, and a special suspension system keeps it in a stable state and protects it from strong hits.
It is a chip weighing 14 grams that combines two different sensors that work simultaneously: an ultra-wideband (UWB) sensor, which serves to determine the exact position of the ball on the field in real time, and an inertial measurement unit (IMU) sensor, which monitors the movement of the ball in three dimensions, i.e. its speed, rotation and acceleration.
The real-time sensor sends data to the referees in the VAR room, and this technology has two key roles - to detect the exact millisecond when the ball is sent and to read the slightest contact with the ball.
Detecting the exact moment in which the ball was sent allows the software to freeze the image in the VAR room at the right moment, which precisely determines the player's position. At the same time, contact detection solves the dilemmas of suspicious handballs or checking whether the ball has caught a player on the way to the goal.
Such data were of key importance when canceling the goal of the Croatian national team.
Fifa states that between 2020 and 2022, a number of tests were carried out, the aim of which was to confirm the accuracy of the data collected by the sensor in the ball. In addition, every competition organized by Fifa is preceded by a series of rigorous tests and protocols to ensure that the technology works flawlessly.
The tests also showed that the sensors do not affect the behavior and flight of the ball, its weight and balance, according to Fifa.
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