All the 20 teams of Premier League will use goal line technology from the start of next season and it will be first used in the next Community Shield at Wembley in August.
According to reports from The Independent, Premier League and the FA are looking to purchase for a definitive system, and it is believed that advanced talks are going on with two of the four licensed providers, including British-based firm Hawk-Eye.
However, the decision to show replays on big screens in the stadium are yet to be decided though it will be shown on television. The Football Association general secretary, Alex Horne insisted that the broadcasters will have the accessibility to show replays of any goal-line incidents but presenting it in the stadium giant screen may fall under the element of controversial decision.
Horne clarified the matter ahead of an International FA Board (IFAB) meeting in Edinburgh, said to the reporters:
“We are in the middle of tendering at the moment with the Premier League, so it is effectively 20 Premier League clubs and Wembley Stadium.
“We are looking at the providers that are available and are looking at a couple and will be making a decision shortly. We expect the technology to be in place for next season, for the Community Shield.”
Premier League are taking strong measures to eradicate human errors as much as possible and that’s why they are making it mandatory for all the Premier League clubs to avail the technology, though whether it will be used in lower leagues or in FA Cup games are still unknown.
Three of the other four licenced providers are based in Germany – GoalRef, CAIROS and GoalControl and there were some suggestions that it might have a bearing for this decision, knowing that England and Germany have a history of goal line controversies between them in international arenas, but Horne was quick to reject at such thoughts.
The opposition to the use of goal line technology has been solely focused on one topical point till now – this technology is not 100% failsafe.
Such lack of fool-proof technology has not stood as an impediment to their use in other sport like the Hawkeye in tennis or the Decision Review System in cricket that uses the Hawkeye and Hot Spot.
What use of technology does is that it minimizes the magnitude of incorrect and contentious decisions that sometimes are taken solely based on the cognition of the human eye. While it is never a possibility to make every stakeholder happy, surely a system where human and machine judgement work in tandem to generate a more accurate outcome is desirable.
The good is never the enemy of the great, and thankfully the Premier League has given pragmatism more importance than technical nitpicking.
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