Anyone who has watched football over the last few years will know the particular pain of watching a striker slot the ball into the net, turning to celebrate, only to stand around awkwardly for forty-five seconds waiting to find out if the goal actually counts. Well, FIFA have apparently heard the collective groan of football fans worldwide and have announced new technology designed to tackle exactly that problem ahead of the 2026 World Cup.
The new system is built to make offside calls faster and more accurate, meaning the days of assistants keeping their flags down while VAR spends what feels like three working days drawing lines on a screen could soon be behind us. The technology uses player tracking data to make decisions almost in real time, which in theory should mean cleaner, quicker calls and fewer moments where you genuinely cannot tell whether to order another pint or head home.
Now, it is worth being honest here. The idea sounds great, and nobody is going to argue against faster and more accurate decisions. But football fans have heard promising things about technology before, and VAR in its current form has not exactly covered itself in glory. The problem was never purely about accuracy. It was about the soul being sucked out of goal celebrations, and whether shaving a few seconds off the process actually fixes that remains to be seen.
That said, if the technology genuinely works as advertised and we are talking about near-instant decisions rather than the current pantomime, then this is a real step forward. The 2026 World Cup is already shaping up to be a massive tournament with its expanded format, and getting the officiating right will matter enormously on that kind of stage.
There will always be debate about where the line is between using technology to help the game and using it to drain every last drop of spontaneity out of it. But faster offside decisions? Most fans, regardless of which club they support, will probably take that without too much argument.
Let me know your thoughts.