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In 2018, the United States men's team missed the World Cup because of this goal against Costa Rica. No, wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on. Did that ball go in? The US team lost over 250 million dollars for not making it to that World Cup. All because of this bad call. Like, soccer moves billions of dollars. Endorsements, streaming rights, merged the beers and wings that don't get eaten in bars if a team doesn't qualify. And the call for where that money goes depends on this guy.
Just a middle-aged guy running in the pitch. And that ghost goal, that's just the start. What he famously called the hand of God. I think Paul McMahon should have dealt with it, George. Terrible decision. That was a terrible But we fixed it, right? Tech fixed it. We brought in 500 hertz ball sensors and 14 camera arrays and sub-millimeter tracking. Except A balaclava-wearing Munster ultra had unplugged the monitor.
Soccer fans absolutely [__] hate technology getting into the game. How is it that every major sport on the planet has had video reviews, challenges for decades, and soccer wants to stay in the Stone Age? Are soccer fans crazy or are there a true flaw in the technology? Is there maybe something I'm not seeing? No, no, hold on. Don't do the intro thing yet. Let me show you a World Cup goal that kind of defined my life. There's no nothing controversial about this play. This is an actual goal. But that good-looking chap there, that's my father. And he's got thoughts on this mess. After one World Cup and a run in the German Bundesliga, my dad also hates tech in soccer.
So, for the past month we've been digging through the tech, digging through the laws, decades of matches and real first-hand soccer stories. Now, I'm going to show you the literal scientific blind spot with VAR cameras and why I think that soccer is forever doomed by technology. Okay, so first I guess we need to talk a little bit about the elephant in the room, which is that soccer is now the football I mean these Americans they Americans they call it soccer. Okay, so we'll get back to this soccer football debacle later, don't worry. And we'll stick to English even though my dad and I that's not our native language. Now, the elephant in the room I meant is that soccer/football is now the third most popular sport in
the US dethroning baseball. If this World Cup is your first time watching soccer, let me tell you my favorite thing about soccer. No other sport in the world puts so much insane weight and value on one point. As a fan, you can be locked into this game that can go 90 minutes without a single goal, but when or and if it finally happens, it is an explosion. Football fans often cry with goals. It is the real deal. Very few sports give you such rare scarce moments of excitement.
I remember of players, you have dreams and you have moments that when you're thinking when is a very important game, scoring a is like the dream I always waiting for and mostly versus a World Cup or something is very important game. That's the moment that I you never would think you can live it again. But these days a goal might look like this. It's late. Certainly the first Can you show the shoot? There are two very different technologies that were used to call that goal and that basically define soccer today. One is VAR and the other is goal-line technology. Most people think they're the same, they're completely different independent parts of the laws.
Now, one of them is terribly flawed, I think. The other one less so, but I'm making this video so that you guys can decide for yourselves. So, let's start with goal-line technology. Now, to make sure we're on the same page, according to the laws, this is a goal as long as the ball completely crosses the line. This, with the ball in net, is not a goal. Simple, right? So, why do referees get it wrong all the time? Well, let me give you three not so simple examples. Take note to see if you're right cuz just like the referee, you're not going to get any replay. Now, which one of these are actual goals and which do you think were called incorrectly?
More pressure on South Africa desperate to get a shot on. Nuno Mendes comes forward LOOKING FOR RONALDO. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? GOAL. ARE YOU ABSOLUTELY KIDDING ME? HAS IT EVEN GONE IN? Kluntz mit dem Versuch, der war fein. Dann kommt Tiffert und jetzt aufgepasst. Kein Tor. Again, two of these three plays were called incorrectly. Now, in that first one, the ball absolutely went in. Here it is frame by frame. But the referee didn't see it or didn't want to see it. So, do referees cheat? Like from
the sidelines it very much feels like a referee is like deliberately screwing a team sometimes. But is that What do you think? Is that a thing? No, I don't think much referees cheat. They make a lot of mistake because you know, you have to remember the situations of a game. There are so many people around the ball. The VAR No, no, no, no. Hold on. We're going to get to VAR in this video. Don't worry about it. We'll we'll get there. But this mistake landed Ronaldo a yellow card. Like he stormed off the pitch before the game ended and it forced Portugal to play two extra games
to make it to that World Cup. Now, this other one is a ghost goal, just like the one that eliminated the US men's team. The referee assumed that the ball went in, but it actually didn't. And then this goal, despite being a very close call, was called correctly, all thanks to this thing. This goal in the 2014 Brazil World Cup was one of the first goal-line technology calls in a World Cup and it took merely seconds for the referee to find out. So, let's pop the hood on what actually went down. Now, in a match, goal-line technology is usually provided by this company called Hawkeye and it's not an instant replay that the referee will review. What Hawkeye actually does is generate a live four-dimensional
mathematical model of the area around the goal. I always love saying four-dimensional, but it's really just 3D plus time. There's no tesseract here. Now, up in the stadium roof or maybe on the catwalks, there is an array of 14 cameras like this one, seven per side. And very crucially, these cameras shoot at 500 frames per second. Every second, 500 times, the system will strip the noise, the cleats, the socks, the chalk lines. It'll isolate the cluster of pixels that represents the ball. And as long as two cameras have a view of the ball, you can triangulate its X, Y, and Z position. But, according to their specs, as long
as just two of the seven cameras can see a mere 25% of the ball's surface, the system's algorithm can reconstruct the rest. Now, if a goal is scored, a radio transmitter placed in the stadium's central server room sends a 915 MHz signal to the ref. Because it has to go through the human bodies and the concrete interference and all those 50,000 cell phones on the stadium. Now, the radio signal is encrypted, has this proprietary protocol, it lands on this watch that's on the referee's wrist to confirm there's a goal. And all of that happens in under a second. The flow of the game is completely uninterrupted. We were both there. I actually remember I remember holding my breath for 2 seconds, which felt like an eternity,
while we figured out if this was a goal or not. And then I remember just I have this core memory of the referee just stretching his hand to confirm that it was a goal. The way the ball I hit is instantly you know that is a goal. I felt like the referee had like was going against us. I was really scared that it they were not going to call it a goal. And it really did take a second because this was not a review. This was just a check to see if the ball had gone in. Fans were happy, we were back to the game immediately. Wait, but if we had goal-line tech, why did that Japan goal take 3 minutes to review? And that goal that eliminated the US, that was in 2017. And
that Ronaldo goal, that's 7 years later in 2021. Why didn't it work for those? Well, because Hawkeye is expensive. A full Hawkeye implementation costs around 250 to 350,000 pounds, about $400,000 per stadium. Now, in the case of that Serbia-Portugal match, the stadium where they were playing just didn't have it. And same for that goal that eliminated the US, which was back in Panama. But, it's not just a developing country problem. Famously, even the Spanish league refuses to use it because it's too expensive. And the Spanish claim that Hawkeye is charging them over 4 million dollars per season to use goal-line technology, and they just don't want to pay.
Being the Spanish league, the second highest grossing soccer league in the world, sounds like they could afford it. They might have avoided this mistake. Now, because there was no goal-line technology, all they had to review was the replays. But, none of the replay angles could determine if the ball went in. To this very day, we still don't know if that was a goal. There are all these like fan-made animations that are trying to fake the look of that real goal-line technology. We just really don't know. Now, this goal or no goal might have cost Barcelona the championship, 60 million euro price. So, why isn't this tech in
every professional game? Like, shouldn't this be mandatory? FIFA is not known for being fast, or efficient, or transparent. But, even accepting goal-line technology took them years. Allegedly, at least according to FIFA at the time, and to this guy, technology would destroy the universality of the game. They were arguing that the World Cup final had to be played in the exact same rules as a Sunday pub league. Which is, you know, an opinion. But, it took years to convince these people to get any of this stuff added to the rules. The first version of goal-line technology used a set of electromagnetic antennas around the goalposts, while the balls had these three copper coils suspended inside them. But, this required a special
ball, and those ball manufacturers were paying millions of dollars in sponsorships to these leagues, you need to get those guys on board. Now, the Hawk-Eye array, despite being more expensive, won because it's a passive system. And Hawk-Eye basically owns this market now. It's what's being used in the 2026 World Cup, what most leagues around the world use. And Hawk-Eye won not just because they don't interrupt the game, but because it does all the work by itself. So, if you run a business, you don't want a chat button. You want an AI that actually does the work. And that's where today's sponsor, Axle Work, comes in.
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You can use the link in the description or this QR code here to join the Axle Work waitlist and get your own AI team. But, if all professional games are being broadcast, can't the referee just check the broadcast? Part of the reason goal-line technology was approved was that this review process was so quick that the call for a goal could be made right there and then, right? But having the referee have to go to a screen and check each play is just devastating to the flow of the game. In that Costa Rica goal, that goal line technology, that's exactly what it needed to do. That's why we could celebrate in two very long seconds. From where I was sitting, I remember. I remember seeing the green light in the referee's wrist
as we scored the goal. so you have hawk eyes, huh? No, no, no. I mean, how could you be against a technology that makes the game more fair? No, no. I'm not against the goal line. I'm against the when you interrupting the game. And for the most part, soccer fans agree on this front. The first successful use of this tech in a World Cup was in this France versus Honduras match in the 2014 Brazil World Cup for this goal. Before this, there was just too many unfair calls. Somebody had to put a stop to this. A goal in football is just too much. It's too important to be left up to the eyes of
some guy on the field. And for the record, there have been some very rare cases where goal line technology is on installed and still missed the call. It seems that this is like a corner case where all goal line technology cameras are blocked by the players. But this is one of the really extremely few cases. Like seeing how important goals are in the game of football, like we can agree that 99.99% tech is better than no tech, right? But again, how about that 3-minute review for Japan versus Spain? Now, this is the Qatar 2022 World Cup. Goal line technology existed. It was installed in the stadium. The problem with this play was actually different.
Now, the laws have other requirements for a goal. Some of these are insanely complex problems, but in this case, it's just a simple one. The ball could have gone out of bounds before the goal. But that's not what goal-line technology was made for. Goal-line only sees the goals. Between the posts, we needed something else. The call in this game was not simple. Check it out. So, by all means, it looks like this ball is out. There's some green even between the line and the ball. But actually, that ball is in. Now, this call relied on the other tech that we listed earlier. This was a VAR call. And VAR is more controversial. Look at that. So, what is your problem with VAR?
Okay, where to begin? Interrupting the game, maybe the feelings about when is a when you score a goal, you always doubting about what's going to happen with the referee. But mostly, I think those three elements is not so good for the for football. For context, well, VAR stands for video assistant referee. And it's officially really a list of technologies. Now, if you look at this from the laws of the game perspective, goal-line technology and VAR, they're two very separate things that live in very different parts of the rules. Goal-line technology is automated, while VAR is a human-led with some tech assistance. Now, the core components of VAR are this booth of four referees. That's the VOR, video operations room, that get involved
in certain calls. We're going to get to them. There's also the referee review area for cases where the main referee needs to go and review a play himself. And you also have these balls that Adidas likes to brag about. This one has a sensor inside, which is placed opposite the valve. It can tell us what the ball is doing in a 3D space. But other than nerding about ball speed, do you really need these for calls? You can even see the faintest of touches here. Like see, if you bounce the ball, you'll see a much bigger Those are actually part of the system called SAOT or semi-automated offside technology. Now, soccer basics, laws of the game, offsides.
It's It's not the easiest thing to grasp, especially if you're new to soccer. Now, offside is football anti-camping rule. It's designed to avoid players from camping near the goalpost. So, the official rules say that a player is offside if any part of his head, body, or feet is nearer to the opponent's goal line than both the ball and the second last opponent. Translating, if a player is behind the ball, it's fine. If a player is ahead of the ball, but there are two defenders in front of that, still fine. One of them is usually going to be the goalkeeper. That's fine. But, if the player is in front of the ball, and there's only one defender left, that's an offside. But, what if the ball is passed to them and then the player starts
running after the ball is passed and outruns the last defender, that's fair game. Calling that from the TV is easy-ish. You have frame by frame, you can see more or less when the ball is kicked. Like, I have no idea how the line ref does it, but how do you automate that type of call? Now, like I said, this starts with the ball. The IMU sensor that's suspended inside the ball measures inertia 500 times per second. It sends a signal to this network of ultra-wideband antennas around the pitch to record the exact microscopic millisecond that the ball is kicked. To figure out if the player was out of play, you need humans, which are assisted by this system. That's why it's
not fully automated like in goal-line technology. So, the system will use this array of cameras that shoot at 50 frames per second that track each player. They track their limbs, and then the AI does this thing to define the player's skeleton. Now, remember, the rules of the game speak about any part of the head, body, or feet. Hands don't count because you technically can't really play the ball with your hand. So, the AI needs to infer the skeleton for each player, find out where the chest ends and where the shoulder or like the arm begins, and find out if that part of the body was closer to the goal line when the ball was kicked. And with that system, you can make close calls, really close calls like this or this.
It would have been impossible for the referee to see any of this. How can this work this way? This is not possible that this happens when a goal is disallowed for things that the human eye can barely detect. That's right. That's actually right. There is a major flaw in this system. I already told you guys what the flaw is. Did you catch it? I said the ball was measuring a kick at 500 times a second, 500 hertz. But the cameras, the cameras are 50 frames per second cameras. That is a big problem. So, check it out. Now, this is me running as fast as I can. This is a 60 frames per second take. It's even faster than what they're using at the stadium. Now, I'm probably slower than a pro soccer player, but still enough to make this
point. Now, look at the distance between one frame and the other. Again, what's supposed to happen with SAOT is that the ball detects the kick sensor signal. Now, the system tries to find the frame that is closer to the moment of the ball impact. But the system doesn't have the 500 records per second that the ball does. So, that's an image every 20 milliseconds. Now, using standard error propagation for an elite player that's sprinting at 8 m/s, there's a 20-ms temporal gap, which means this result is uncertain by 16 cm.
Now, if you had other uncertainties from like spatial resolution or camera calibration, the total uncertainty on a call could be as high as 34 cm. And yet, we are calling this [__] offside? This is crazy. Would you prefer being called offside by mistake from the referee or by a mistake from the technology? By a mistake from the referee. And if you think that frame rate flaw is bad, that is not even the biggest controversy with VAR. Because those deep AI 3D reviews, they don't happen all the time. Like VAR is only applicable to the game in important place. And that is the main problem. Who decides what's important place? In an attempt to reduce game
interruptions, in theory, in theory, VAR is supposed to be used in only four cases of clear and obvious errors from the on-field call. Now, those cases are: A, a mistaken identity, which rarely happens, right? It's when the referee sends off the wrong person. Direct red cards, that's a heavy aggression by a player. Then there's goal, no goal, which is easy in theory, but remember that Barcelona goal that the camera couldn't catch. And finally, penalty or no penalty. Those are fouls or handballs inside the goal area. So, a penalty is basically a goal. About 71% penalties end up in a goal, and that's the part that absolutely drives fans crazy.
Same with this handball, like clearly visible. This must be a penalty. He's not given it. Find that incredible. How do four refs on the pitch plus four refs in the VAR booth miss this stuff? Like we can speculate for hours about hidden interests and money decisions, but that's really a rabbit hole for another day. Probably for another channel, even. My big question is like as a player, isn't more fairness better? Like even though calls get missed sometimes, I mean, they are missed less than they used to be missed. But, how do you How do players on the field deal with wrong calls?
It's part of what we always um deal with, right? It can be wrong or right decision. So, you always have to prepare. Sometime emotion don't make you react the best way. But, normally we have that thinking that you always have to be on the next play. So, you don't have to lose time about think about mistake or not. And there are very valid misses from VAR that almost seem to make you lose hope that any form of tech can ever fix this. Now, this is one of the most extreme cases where the VAR team reviewed the video, determined that the goal was valid, and didn't properly communicate that to the main ref.
Just check the offside delay. Give me kick point. Let's go. Kick point, please. To the line on the video. I'll stop Check complete. This was a goal that was disallowed. The VAR saw it, and for some rule conundrum, the ref decided to ignore it. On field decision was offside. Are you happy with this decision? Delay restart. Yeah. Can't do anything. In that and so many cases, those refs have been sanctioned after the game. But, the major problem with VAR is that it still leaves decisions to this human opinion live on the field or to a human
interpretation of the rules that you can't change afterwards. But, trying to analyze this with numbers and stats, that I think that's exactly the problem. Like, take a sport like tennis, for example. Like, the dynamic of the game is so different. You have turns and points and games and sets. And it is a mess. But, stopping the game for a moment in tennis to review a point isn't really disrupting to the natural flow of the game compared to, say, when Hawkeye didn't exist. Look at American football.
The game is designed to stop all the time almost as if it was designed around ad breaks. Basketball is less broken in terms of turns, but it still designed around plays. Soccer is not a sport of turns. The dynamic of soccer requires the game not to stop. It would be a completely different sport if you'd be required to stop for every dubious call. There's this building of tension, of this ongoing You know what? Maybe it's time to bring the expert. We both agree that one of the reasons why soccer as a sport has struggled to break through in countries like the US is because American broadcast media companies, they're really effective at monetizing stoppages, but
there are no stoppages in soccer. There can't be. Goals get scored and games get won precisely because a team needs to be laser focused for 90 minutes, and breaking that focus determines games and championships. Like VAR is a problem for soccer fans, not just because it's still not fair, but because it breaks the nature of the game. And injury time is actually not making up for it. Research has noted that matches with one or more VAR interventions have an average effective playing time of 51.5 minutes compared to 55 minutes in matches that don't have intervention. So, the numbers actually confirm it. I guess I've been watching
soccer for all my life. And what I like the most is that release. Like I finish when I finish watching a game of soccer and I've been really invested in it, I feel like this catharsis. Not only if we win or if we lose, hopefully we if we win, but this catharsis that you release with a goal or this catharsis that you release like being in the stands. I don't think that's something that other sports allow you to do. But I guess what do you like most of soccer as a player? Which is of course what VAR takes away so often. But, you know, soccer is so different Well, now that you mention it, it is actually football. Football came first in England in 1863 and then American football came later in 1869 and
it was officially designed as a mix of rugby and football. So this term football existed first before Americans called it soccer. So I guess that we have dibs on the name. So sorry Americans. Now YouTube really thinks that you're going to love this other video from our channel. You should check it out if you do. Smash that subscribe button.
