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No more delayed flag? Fifa adds new offside tech for World Cup
BBC Sport – The delayed offside flag could almost become a thing of the past after Fifa unveiled new technology to be used at the 2026 World Cup.
Fifa will introduce advanced semi-automated offside for video assistant referees (VAR) which should make decisions faster and mean an assistant can raise the flag rather than wait for a move to play out.
A real-time audio alert will be sent to the assistant if a player is more than 10cm offside.
Previous versions of the technology tested at the Club World Cup and the Intercontinental Cup only notified the officials if a player was greater than 50cm offside.
The official will remain in charge of when to raise the flag and stop play. They may keep the flag down if they suspect there has been a malfunction, but Fifa says a series of failsafe measures are in the technology to prevent errors happening.
Fifa has been working on ways to improve offside decisions for the World Cup. (Getty Images)
The technology will still be unable to pick out the closest offsides, while there are limitations if players are on the ground or if there are several too close together.
It can only be used for positional offside and not for subjective calls, those which require interpretation around whether a player has interfered with an opponent without touching the ball.
Fifa hopes it will remove some of the frustration felt by supporters and players, and reduce the chance of injury due to needless passages of play when an offside flag is going to be raised.
In May 2025, Nottingham Forest striker Taiwo Awoniyi had to be placed in an induced coma after colliding with a post when the assistant delayed raising an offside flag.
Fifa also confirmed that life-like, AI-enabled 3D avatars of every player will be created to make more accurate decisions.
This will mean creating a digital scan of all 1,248 players in the 26-man squads of the 48 teams.
Each player will enter a chamber to be scanned, a process that should take just one second and only needs to be done once during their pre-tournament photo shoot.
As a result, enhanced, clearer offside animations will be used at the World Cup.
New ‘out of bounds’ and ‘line of sight’ technology
Fifa has also approved the use of technology which can determine if the ball went out of play before a goal was scored.
In February, Aston Villa had a goal disallowed against Brentford in contentious circumstances when it was unclear if the ball had gone out.
A 3D animation will be created, just like with goalline technology, which can show the exact ball position.
The chip in the ball will indicate which player touched the ball last, which should enable the VAR to check if a corner was the correct decision as part of new powers.
Fifa has also expanded ‘Real-time 3D Recreation’ to make ‘line-of-sight’ judgements for offsides quicker and clearer.
There are two virtual feeds, available to the VAR and TV viewers, which replicate the perspectives of both goalkeepers.
There were several ‘line-of-sight’ offside incidents this season where there were questions whether the goalkeeper’s view had been impacted. This is intended to give the VAR an extra tool to make that decision.
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