A modern approach to determine the offside law in international football

The outcome of football matches is heavily dependent on referee decisions regarding violations of the offside rule. Football players should decide the outcome of the game rather than the referees. Instead of technology discrediting the ability of referees it should be adopted into the game to increase the accuracy of the offside decision. A system has been proposed that uses player tracking technology to quantify players’ positions and runs an algorithm to determine which players are offside. The likelihood of algorithm error is dependent on the accuracy of player tracking technology. It was found that algorithm accuracy is improved by increasing the sampling rate and precision of player tracking technologies. The most suitable technology form for use in the proposed system is camera based player tracking. No device is required to be worn by players and body segment positions can be determined to ensure the offside law is completely adhered to. Before this proposed system could fully function a series of improvements must be made to the proof of concept model. © 2014 Henderson, A., Lai, D., Allen, T. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Centre for Sports Engineering Research, Sheffield Hallam University.