Football World Cups traditionally serve to introduce new rules and institutes. The last major changes were the introduction of the vanishing spray, goal-line technology and the video assistant referee (VAR). As FIFA represents a monopoly of associations worldwide (in contrast to boxing, for instance, where there are different associations with different regulations), these amendments are rules of the game for football that must be taken into account worldwide.
For certain technical rule changes, such as the VAR, an opt-out exists. This means that if these rule changes are implemented, it must be done in accordance with FIFA rules. The fact that a full implementation of all rule changes is not possible even in different professional leagues is due to cost reasons. For example, the Austrian Bundesliga does not use goal-line technology, but does use the VAR.
At the World Cup in Qatar, FIFA is introducing a semi-automated offside technology for the first time. Since there are no discretionary decisions in offside, unlike foul plays or red cards, for example, FIFA wants to use it to make the VAR's decisions quicker and more reliable.
The new semi-automatic offside technology was tested under competition conditions at the Arab Cup and the Club World Cup in February. A 500Hz signal in the ball and 12 cameras that use data points to record players' movements will be used to detect the position of players who may be offside even more accurately than before. The data is checked by the VAR and immediately forwarded to the referee on the pitch.
FIFA hopes that this will lead to much faster and more accurate decision-making in questions of offside.
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