The Smart Ball is Back! Yipee!

I suppose the fact that hardly anyone has mentioned the presence of the Dreaded Smart Ball at the Club World Cup is a sign that things are going well with it, because nothing’s more fun that bitching about “innovations,” and how they’re destroying football.

The “smart ball” thing has been tried at a couple of other FIFA-sanction events, and the idea is a good one: Sensors in the ball and on the goal-line will let the referee know if the ball has crossed the line completely, thus allowing him to make sure the correct decision is made when the ball is either cleared or saved off the line, and that pesky human fallibility becomes a factor. (Of course, there’s technological fallibility to consider, too — say, if the sensor in the zillion dollar ball goes out every time it rains.)

Because of the dismal reception that greeted earlier, wildly complicated and unreliable attempts at smart ball technology, the whole system has been overhauled, and is apparently much more manageable now: There are four sensors on the goal line and one in the ball, and when the ball crosses the line, it sends a signal to the referee’s watch to let him know a goal has been scored. Simple, right? It sure is way less cumbersome that the systems in the NHL and NFL, which usually end with the officials gathered around a TV monitor, trying to see what’s happened.

So far, the magic ball hasn’t been called into action to decide any matches, but just wait: When a Milan shot is cleared off the line in the final against Boca Juniors, and the referee’s watch tells him the ball was not, in fact, across the line, the technology will suddenly be the issue du jour in the football press.

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Category: Club World Cup, World Football

Tags: Club World Cup, smart ball, technology, World Football

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