A whole new ball game

Get ready to see a whole lot more of Messi with goggles and 3D on way for next World Cup, writes BRIAN BOYD

REMEMBER TO enjoy the rest of this World Cup because it will be the last one you will be experiencing as a passive recipient of normal audio and visual on a television screen. By the time the next World Cup comes around, how we experienced South Africa 2010 will seem hopelessly archaic.

Because of its massive multibillion worldwide viewing audience, the four-yearly World Cup operates as staging posts in the ineluctable march of new technology.

From the first World Cup in colour (Mexico 1970), there was a three-decade technological lull before we got to experience it on high definition – which seemed impossibly advanced when it debuted – and now, for the first time, on 3D.

There were great hopes that this tournament would be the first to showcase how Augmented Reality (using your mobile phone to overlay information) could enhance our viewing pleasure but the telecommunication companies decided to sit this World Cup out – largely due to the fact that Fifa isn’t prone to entering into dialogue with any company which isn’t already a big-cheque-giving “official” partner.

Well before the next World Cup, however, you will able to point your mobile phone at a player on the screen and get tons of overlay information: shots on target, ground covered, passes completed etc. All of which might sound a bit uber-geeky but never underestimate the thirst for useless knowledge of the hardcore football fan.

It is being predicted with no little sense of authority that, by the time the next World Cup rolls around, we will have bypassed Augmented Reality bells and whistles completely and instead be in Star Trek-looking “video goggles” land. Whether watching the game at home or in the stadium itself, these goggles will not only give you all the ancillary information about the match and its players but you’ll be able to stop, pause and rewind the action, as well as change the viewing angle and summon up instant replays of key moments.

With goggle technology (currently at an advanced stage – type “video goggles” into the search box of YouTube to see demos) you’ll be able to download the match to your computer where you can play the ultimate version of “Fantasy Football”.

Software packages will enable you to make your own substitutions, change tactics etc to see how the match would have played out (virtually) if only the bench had listened to your hysterically screamed advice.

For the big leap though, we will most likely have to wait for (you guessed it) the Japanese who are currently working on 3D Hologram technology. This is really the stuff of fantasy but predictions are that, within 10 years, we will be able to amble along to the Aviva Stadium to watch the World Cup final in real time as if we were in the actual host country’s stadium itself thanks to holographic representation.

The Ronaldos and the Messis of the future will be running around in front of you, no different to how fans at the actual match are experiencing the action.

The Japanese claim they can pull off this outlandish-sounding feat by capturing the action on over 200 3D HD cameras at each game while microphones below the turf record all the audio action.

The big idea here is that after the initial holographic representation exercise is perfected, it will open the door for the “Holo-TV” which will look like an iPad. Place it on your floor and lasers will project images that will float in the middle of your room. We are also less than a decade away from the first public sales of the “Holo-TV”, commentators predict.

How technology will impact on the footballers itself remains a moot point. This is, after all, a sport which still doesn’t allow “video referees” to review the action and say, send off a French player for deliberate hand ball in the penalty box during a crucial World Cup play-off.

Nanotechnology opens up many interesting ideas for all sports. If you could put a microchip into a player’s shirt or boots, all sorts of vital ergonomic and performance-related data could be relayed back to the manager and coaching staff on the bench.

A manager could have instant updates on fatigue levels of players, which muscle groups are under undue strain, how many calories have been burned, what the player’s body temperature is, etc. Obviously such information would be vital to tactical substitutions.

The use of nanotechnology would also make for some interesting half-time talks. The manager would be able to see which players are slacking, how much ground has been covered and which bones and joints need immediate treatment.

A lot of this technology just needs a few tweaks and trial runs in lower football divisions in order to get it up and running for Champions League matches. But unlike the technology that will greatly enhance how we view the football match – which everyone is in favour of – there has always been a resistance among football governing bodies, team managers and the players themselves to any advances which would take the “spontaneity” out of the game.

It took years for the football world to accept the fact that extra goal-line officials – as trialled in this year’s Europa League – might help eradicate some of the game’s many refereeing errors. Sepp Blatter may have softened his stance on goal-line technology after apologising to both England and Mexico this week over incidents that led to wrong decisions on vital goals but it seems that all concerned still prefer heated post-game debates/shouting matches about dodgy refereeing decisions rather than just consulting a video replay of the incident in question to come up with a definitive and fair refereeing decision.

And would football fans really prefer a world where all the action on the pitch was decided by clinical technological means instead of the melodramatic sense of victimhood which allows players and fans alike to scream “we were robbed” and throw a torrent of choice personal abuse at the officials?

Allowing performance-enhancing technology on the pitch – and determining how much such technology intrudes on the game – will probably get stalled in Fifa talking shops for the odd decade or so. In the meantime, the rest of us can look forward to the first Holographic World Cup in our front rooms. It will make even the new 3D television look like a fuzzy black and white image from the first televised World Cup back in 1954.