David Coote saga has me hoping for the unthinkable – AI football referees

OPINION: Tech in football is a touchy subject with the constant controversy over VAR. However, what if there was a way to actually remove human error and the perception of bias from refs? Forget VAR, just bring in AIR – The Artificially Intelligent Referee.

Bear with me. I’m getting to the tech bit. But first, some background.

The revelations surrounding Premier League referee David Coote, including a foul-mouthed rant against one club and its German former manager leading to a suspension from duties, have shattered the illusion that – on some levels – football referees don’t carry with them their own biases and grievances.

How could they not? They’re human after all. Most of them will have a team they support, and most of them will have had bad experiences with clubs, players, managers, and fans in games they’ve refereed, which have stuck in their craw.

However, until this week, we didn’t really have any evidence of those grievances being aired publicly. Then Mr Coote said the quiet part out loud and we have an unprecedented crisis of confidence in football officiating that makes the status quo untenable.

The fact David Coote thinks Jurgen Klopp is a “c**t” doesn’t mean he’s enacted that opinion in the way he referees games. But it’s certainly given football fans license to go through every contentious decision with a fine-toothed comb and wonder “what about this one?”.

Perception is everything and it’s why Coote can never be allowed to referee in the Premier League again. And it has knock on effects. Fans of clubs other than Liverpool can focus on the ref they believe always screws them over and say: “I bet they all think like that.”

Which is why I’m about to type words that have never left these fingers before: Let’s replace them all with AI referees. Forget this bionic method of adjudicating football and the current, unwieldy union of technology and humans.

Bring on our AIR overlords

Let’s have a constant VAR, and remove the humans from the decision-making process.

Let’s get the AI trained up on the rulebook and the intended interpretations of the rules and bombard that neural processing unit with footage of every foul, offside, penalty, handball, natural and unnatural position of the arm, piece of violent conduct, alleged bit of goalkeeper interference (glares at Arsenal), or tug of the shirt. Let if judge the severity and the impact of all of it.

Show the AI everything. Every minute of every game recorded in the Premier League, every season. Show it all the contentious calls, show it the subjective calls. Give it a huge database to work with.

Have it re-ref every single one of these games without the pervading narratives about some clubs, or some players, or some grounds. See how many penalties should have been given against Liverpool at Anfield, or how many of Anthony Gordon’s bookings for diving are actually justified.

Have it judge all the decisions made in these games, and then create an algorithm that ensures rules are applied consistently based upon the examples the AI is familiar with from all the other cases. This way a penalty in football becomes a binary decision, applied as consistently as an in/out call in tennis, or an out/not out review in cricket.

Remove the human element – the mistakes, the grievances, the potential for bias to creep in – and just let the machines handle it.

Let the referee become the fella on the field who just confirms what they AI has ruled. They can still place the ball, show the cards, and blow on their whistle, but anything important goes to the AI. Any complaints? The appointed communicator of the decision (fka the referee) can stand in the middle can just point to the cloud(s) and say “take it up with them”.

If you haven’t guessed already, I’m being facetious. It’s been a bit of a weird week (did you see that Mars bar without the chocolate wave? I’m sure we’re living in a different timeline lately).

This is hugely impractical. I very much doubt this is technically possible, especially in the speed that’s required. Quick decisions like standard fouls require an instant whistle. And there’s still subjective, circumstantial incidents in every football game that require a uniquely human interpretation.

Semi-automated saviour

I’ve had a hate, hate relationship with VAR – the video assistant referee – since it’s introduction into the Premier League in 2019. I’ve always said I’d be fine with casting off the experiment and living with the occasional mistakes refs make. But that relied on faith in the integrity of the on-field officials, which has been seriously questioned this week.

You’ll often hear the fans point out the myriad issues caused by VAR aren’t always the fault of the technology itself (although it has some limitations that mean it’s overstretched), but the plonkers in the VAR room in Stockley Park implementing it. Looking to rule out goals for minor infractions, looking to give penalties for even less. It’s not been used in the spirt of the game.

Fans have issues with the inconsistent interpretation of rules, and the ever-moving bar for what constitutes a “clear and obvious mistake” to justify a VAR intervention.

That’s why I’m excited about semi-automated offside bring introduced into the Premier League later this season. It removes some of the guesswork, it relies on better cameras in the stadium, it knows exactly where every player on the field is, and can call upon a sensor in the ball itself to tell officials exactly when the final ball is played to the attacker. It works brilliantly and quickly in the Champions League.

In this instance, the actual video assistant referee’s job is to confirm the semi-automated offside system’s decision, and be a backup if there are any outages or anomalies.

If we could have this for every decision, then be onto something. Refereeing is an impossible job at the top level these days. Players are constantly looking to cheat to gain an advantage, the pressures, stakes and sums of money involved are extraordinary. And VAR hasn’t helped them as much as it should have (mainly because of their plonker colleagues in Stockley Park). Why not relieve them of the stress and let AI handle it?

It’s hardly on the scale of Muhammad Ali’s historic refrain about why he objected to fighting in Vietnam, which continues to echo in the present day. However, if you’ll allow the privilege of bastardising the quote while echoing the sentiment:  “No automated offside system ever called my club’s manager a C-word.”

I for one welcome our AI overlords scuttling around in black carrying a little notebook and coloured cards.