Could AI football referees really be coming over the horizon?

Football Daily dreams of the day when VAR, an ostensibly progressive technology that has done for football what social media did for human relations, is placed lovingly back in its box, one made entirely of industrial-strength dynamite. Be careful what you wish for, and all that. According to our Silicon Valley-dwelling cousin, Football dAIly – who persists with that name even though we’ve told them a million times it doesn’t work because the capital I looks too similar to the lower-case l, so nobody will get the joke – something far worse is coming over the horizon: AI referees.

“Computer vision will be more and more effective in the next few years and the number of cameras on the pitch will only increase,” yapped Aldo Comi, chief suit of HANG ON, LOOK AT THE FIRST AND LAST LETTERS OF THIS FELLA’S NAME! DOES HE EVEN EXIST! football analytics provider Soccerment. “The amount of data that is tagged and the quality of the models that are trained with that data will increase exponentially and thanks to that you will have AI models that can make refereeing decisions on the back of what they see on the pitch.”

Football Daily, like an unfettered minority of Soft Play fans, doesn’t like change. In the interests of balance, however, we’d like to acknowledge AI is superior to humanity in certain areas. Goal-line technology works flawlessly, for example, and AI’s superior intelligence means it is going to kill us all, without mercy or sentiment, sooner rather than later. But we are struggling to comprehend an AI-powered machine that would be able to deal with the endless subjectivity of a football match – to discern, for example, whether Graeme Souness intended to vasectomise the little Romanian or merely wound him.

That’s not the only problem. Whose unimpeachable authority will Mikel Arteta and Jürgen Klopp politely acknowledge every time a free-kick is correctly awarded against their team? And what will supporters sing? “The algorithm’s a w@nk3r” doesn’t scan, and by 2050 nobody will remember Gloria Estefan and Miami Sound Machine. You can’t hurt the feelings of an algorithm anyway. And if it turns out you can, that just means it will kill us all, without mercy or sentiment. “Maybe linesmen will be the first to disappear from the game,” continued Comi, as pedants foamed with impotent rage. “And you will have the referee connected to the virtual assistant, guiding them to make better decisions. Ultimately in a matter of 20 or 30 years probably the referee will be just an AI. I am not saying this is positive, I’m just saying it is likely to happen.”

You don’t have any say in the matter. None of us do.

Spain coach of eight years, Jorge Vilda, has been bundled through the door marked Do One as the Spanish football federation begins what it calls “renewal measures” in the wake of the Luis Rubiales World Cup kiss scandal. Vilda was sent packing in a statement that made no mention as to why he lost his job and, in fact, blew the kind of smoke up his behind that would have one believe he was universally adored and not the kind of bloke who his own players ghosted at every opportunity. “We value his impeccable personal and sporting conduct, being a key piece in the notable growth of women’s football in Spain,” it gushed. “During his extensive period, Vilda has been a promoter of the values of respect and sportsmanship in football.” Ooh, can’t you just smell that renewal? Earlier in the day the RFEF apologised to everyone it could think of for making a show of itself by supporting Rubiales in the past few weeks and said it would assist in Fifa’s investigation into its suspended president.

“I can understand the frustration. I can understand the anger. I get it. All I can say around that is that I’m sorry that they feel like that. My intention was never, ever to hurt anyone. My intention has always been to help causes and communities where I felt like they have asked for my help … I’ve worn the [rainbow] laces. I’ve worn the [rainbow] armband. I’ve spoken to people in that community to try to use my profile to help them. That’s all I’ve ever tried to do” – Jordan Henderson with a classic non-apology apology to the LGBTQ+ community, there. To be fair he did say he thought “about things a lot” before deciding to trouser vast amounts a week at Al-Ettifaq, owned by the ministry of sport for Saudi Arabia, where being gay is a crime with a maximum sentence of the death penalty.

In response, the co-chair of Pride in Football and co-founder of Three Lions Pride said these latest comments have not helped mend relations. “It feels like it’s a way of him trying to rebuild his image and nothing he’s said is either convincing or makes any kind of difference,” sighed Joe White. “It just re-establishes the disappointment.”