With controversies surrounding refereeing being rife this season in French football, governing bodies may turn to artificial intelligence to improve the situation. Indeed, as reported this Tuesday in L’Equipe, the company Good Game has been invited to a meeting on February 2nd to present its capabilities.
“To inform decision-making through calculations within the team.”
“Yesterday afternoon, during the liaison committee meeting between clubs and referees, it was decided to invite Good Game, a French tech company specializing in artificial intelligence and working specifically on refereeing, to the next meeting scheduled for February 2nd.”
Its CEO, Pierre Sallet, explains, “Good Game’s Ref-Eval solution is a scientific tool to assist video refereeing that confirms over 98% of correct decisions, across all situations.” But it allows, for the 2% of complex decisions that directly influence the score, for the decision-making process to be informed by calculations within the image.
This could be a valuable asset for correcting even more errors, as video assistance has already helped but hasn’t eliminated everything. This will be very difficult, since part of refereeing still relies on interpretation, and it’s complicated to have rules that allow for an “automatic” decision. There’s also always a lack of objectivity from players, coaches, managers, and fans, which doesn’t help referees do their job.
This doesn’t change the fact that progress seems possible, particularly in terms of consistency from one match to the next. Perhaps AI can be a tool. One of the major challenges will be not slowing down the game, as VAR sometimes seems interminable.
