{"id":232805,"date":"2026-01-07T19:02:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T19:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/232805\/"},"modified":"2026-01-07T19:02:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T19:02:08","slug":"world-cup-2026-fifa-to-digitally-scan-all-players-to-create-offside-avatars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/232805\/","title":{"rendered":"World Cup 2026: Fifa to digitally scan all players to create offside avatars"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fifa plans to create AI-enabled 3D avatars of every player at the 2026 World Cup to enhance the tournament’s semi-automated offside technology.<\/p>\n

This will mean creating a digital scan of all 1,248 players in the 26-man squads of the 48 teams.<\/p>\n

Each player will enter a chamber to be scanned, a process that should take just one second and only needs to be done once during their pre-tournament photo shoot.<\/p>\n

Fifa says the scan “captures highly accurate body-part dimensions” to make more accurate offside decisions.<\/p>\n

It expects this to mean tournament officials will be able to “track players reliably during fast or obstructed movements” and says final decisions will be “displayed more realistically and in a more engaging way”.<\/p>\n

There was controversy in the Premier League earlier this season when a Newcastle goal against Manchester City was allowed to stand.<\/p>\n

Ruben Dias appeared to be jumping<\/a> in the semi-automated offside graphic. This did not match the television pictures of the game.<\/p>\n

Fifa hopes that by taking accurate scans of each player it can improve how these decisions are shown to supporters.<\/p>\n

The technology was tested in Fifa’s Intercontinental Cup, with Flamengo and Pyramids FC players scanned ahead of their match in December.<\/p>\n

Fifa announced last month it was testing new technology which can determine if the ball goes out of play<\/a> before a goal is scored. It has also developed ‘real-time 3D recreation’ to make line-of-sight offside decisions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fifa plans to create AI-enabled 3D avatars of every player at the 2026 World Cup to enhance the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":232806,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-232805","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}