The chip era arrives at the World Cup: Croatia is eliminated due to technology

Barcelona"The referee didn't give us the goal even though he said that according to him, it was legal," complained the Croatian Martin Baturina. It was the last minute of the Portugal-Croatia match and the Portuguese were winning 2-1. A Croatian cross from the wing reached the area and after a rebound, Gvardiol scored the 2-2. The referee, the Norwegian Espen Eskas, awarded the goal, but was quickly informed that there might be an offside. "He told us that the sensor in the ball indicated there was contact," complained Baturina. And so it was. The cross had been lightly headed by Igor Matanovic, causing an almost invisible contact to the human eye that turned an apparently legal cross into an offside.

"There is no debate. Technology proves there was contact. It does not admit discussion, science helps us," said the Catalan Robert Martínez at the end of the match. The Croatians did not see it that way. "He doesn't deflect the ball. You don't see it affecting the trajectory. You see the images and you don't see him touch it. How can you disallow a legal goal for an action where a hair touches the ball," complained the Croatian Petar Susic. Igor Matanovic, the man who had touched the ball, would admit that "honestly, I think I felt a slight contact with my hair. I asked the referee, he wasn't sure if I had touched it. He told me there was a subtle touch on the ball and it was offside."

If the referees decided to modify their decision, it was because they received a warning. This year's World Cup ball has a motion sensor, a chip installed inside one of its four panels, which collects detailed information of every contact with the ball and sends it immediately to VAR. With this technology, it is possible to know the moment of a touch, which helps in deciding offside plays, such as Josko Gvardiol's disallowed goal.

The image offered on the TV broadcast and that FIFA has uploaded to social media allows us to see a flat line with a small movement at the moment of contact. "The IMU sensors housed inside the Trionda ball are capable of detecting any slight contact, shown to viewers in the broadcast as a 'heartbeat graph'" the tournament organizing body has communicated. The system uses 16 specific cameras to track the positions of the ball and players, generally 50 times per second. In each frame, 29 data points are collected per player, which include all body parts that are taken into account for signaling offside.

According to FIFA, this sensor captures data 500 times per second, and records the precise movements of the ball in three dimensions, to see if there is any alteration in direction or speed, to be clear whether or not contact has occurred.

This is the second World Cup with a ball with a chip. In Qatar it already had one, four years ago, and it already had prominence in the match Portugal-Uruguay, when Cristiano Ronaldo celebrated a goal after a cross from his teammate Bruno Fernandes. Thanks to the chip, FIFA determined that Cristiano had not touched the ball and gave the goal to Bruno Fernandes. Now it has acted again, in this case to bring joy to Cristiano Ronaldo.