Although FC Barcelona's sensational defeat at Estadio Anoeta was directly caused by Sheraldo Becker's goal in the 33rd minute, the most widely discussed goal is the one that was disallowed. In the 15th minute, Robert Lewandowski put the ball in the net after he won a battle for position with defender Nayef Aguerd. Unfortunately, after the VAR analysis, the judges ruled that the Pole was slightly offside. At that time, they had no idea what a powerful storm they were about to create.
Lewandowski at the center of a big scandal. The Spanish even argue about it
All because the graphic image created by the semi-automatic VAR system only deepened the doubts. It looked more or less as if the Algerian defender's foot could have been confused with the Pole's foot by technology. Especially since in the “natural” shot it also looks as if Aguerd was a little closer to the goal. A huge discussion broke out. Many experts criticized the referees, while VAR director Carlos Clos Gomez tried to defend the technology. He even argued with journalist Manu Carrena about it.
The Relevo portal decided to “bite” the topic from a more scientific side. The Spanish turned to SST Systems, a company that uses the same system as VAR for its traffic analyses. So they know him inside and out. Specialists there emphasized that the technology is extremely accurate and there is no chance of it shifting anything in the image relative to the original.
Technology specialists obey VAR referees
– The ball has a sensor that freezes images of receivers when a player makes a pass. It sends 500 pieces of information per second, so the margin of error can be two thousandths of a millimeter. It is impossible for this to affect the position of the players, explained one of the engineers.
He emphasized, however, that it is impossible to create an absolutely perfect copy and there is always a margin of error. – He may fail, he is not infallible. But if previously the judge was wrong by 3 percent, now thanks to this technology it can be 0.003 percent, which of course may improve further in the future. However, the system could have made a mistake, e.g. showing Lewandowski with the defender's foot. This is due to the proximity of the body parts, we read.
According to experts from SST Systems, the awareness of how accurate the system is most likely causes judges to have unshakable faith in its validity. But this shouldn't be done. – I imagine that, using such a precise system, judges generally do not question its verdicts. However, such actions need to be looked at from many different perspectives and not to draw hasty conclusions without all available perspectives – warned the engineer.