Each set of goal posts in the Premiership will have Hawk-Eye’s seven cameras deciding whether or not the whole of the ball crosses the whole of the line.
The system is apparently “millimetre accurate, ensuring no broadcast replays could disprove the decision”.
The first official English use will be in August’s Community Shield match.
Hawk-Eye is best known for its use when a tennis player reckons they’ve been hard done by and asked the umpire to review a line call.
It’s also used as one of the means of review for cricket – unless you’re playing India.
The difference in football will be there won’t be a review system, but a vibrating watch worn by the referee to notify when the ball’s gone over the line within one second of it happening.
It will take six weeks for the installation of the system into the goals at the 17 Premier League clubs who stay up and the three teams who win promotion from the Championship.
While voting in favour of the goal line technology, the chairmen were wary of any further computer interference on a football field.
“I think we should be careful,” Stoke City Chairman Peter Coates told BBC. “The great thing about our game is that it should be simple, free-flowing and that it carries on. We don’t want to become like a rugby game, so I’m probably in favour of simplicity and keeping a lot as it is.”
West Ham co-owner David Gold is more open to developments, saying: “It’s a start, who knows where it will take us? Fans will have a big say in this, and also TV will have a big say. We want to take the big, bad decisions out of football, and this kind of technology will do that. It’s been a good day for football.”
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