June 28, 2010 by Alexei M
Following yesterday’s tragic trouncing of the England football team against Germany, technology buffs are calling for a rethink on Fifa’s refusal to use goal-line technology. The match, which saw England getting beaten 4-1, highlighted the fact that Fifa, football’s governing body, is reluctant to adopt gadgets on the pitch to determine whether goals should be allowed to be counted.
Fifa has aimed to retain the traditional values of football, by relying upon decisions from referees to establish whether goals should be allowed, despite the fact that most other sports have turned to technology to assess the accuracy of decisions made. Cricket and Tennis both utilise hawkeye technology to track ball movements and assist umpires. The Wimbledon Championships, staged by the All England Club, uses gadgets during matches.
For the past twenty years, tennis has been supported by IBM, to manage and process data from games. The technology is available across a number of different platforms, assisting the shift towards social media which viewers enjoy. Umpires update the score through the use of PDAs. And data collectors log activities on the court.
More and more people who attend matches and games are armed to the hilt with gadgets such as iPhones and PDAs, recording snippets of games and distributing them upon the web. Twitter has already recognised the potential of supporting social media through enhanced locations facilities, enabling people to Tweet geographically-specific update sand share their commentary on a match or game with other people attending.
While ultimately, hawkeye technology would not have saved England from a thorough defeat, it’s interesting to consider what may have happened should the second goal by the team have been permitted. Having the legitimate goal allowed may have boosted morale as the team equalised, giving the team a much-needed morale boost. Sports commentators and fans are now calling for hawkeye technology to be accepted within international football, and it remains to be seen if a strong lesson has been learned, at England’s expense.
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