SLOMO.TV videoReferee Servers Make Difference for Football Medical Personnel

As a super-technological organization, FIFA uses all the possibilities of video recording not only to make the game interesting and fair, but also to make it safe. For this reason, a Venue Medical Officer must be provided with a replay tablet at every FIFA tournament to play back video footage of any incidents that may occur.

Football players are often exposed to injuries caused by collisions with other players, the ball or pitch and ground equipment (such as barriers, anchors, goals, team shelters, dugouts, benches, flag poles), which can sometimes have a delayed effect on their health. For example, the player may suffer a partial fracture that isn’t immediately felt, but may develop into a full fracture if the person continues to play. Head trauma is also notoriously dangerous if left undiagnosed and untreated. Some of the medical problems that may occur to football players on the pitch during a match are as follows: sudden cardiac arrest; fractures and dislocations; spinal injuries; head injuries and concussions; maxillofacial injuries.

Venue Medical Officer using gesture-controlled wireless tablet to investigate incident.

According to the study ‘Epidemiology of injuries in professional football: a systematic review and meta–analysis‘, published in 2020, the overall incidence of injuries in male professional football players was 8.1 injuries/1000 hours of exposure. The incidence of match injuries is almost 10 times higher than the incidence of training injuries, and higher in international tournaments than in national leagues. As expected, lower extremity injuries were by far the most frequent location for an injury with an incidence rate of 6.8 injuries per 1000 hours of exposure. The thigh was the most commonly injured anatomical region followed by the knee. Furthermore, the most common type of injury grouping was muscle/tendon injuries.

It is very important that team physicians are able to record and identify such incidents. To this end, FIFA has appointed Venue Medical Officers to be present at all international competitions to assess the health consequences of injuries and the ability of athletes to continue competing after an incident. This can be done using either a dedicated video recording system or a remote independent VAR workplace configured to provide only the necessary feeds.

SLOMO.TV introduces a tablet solution based on a VAR server for medical tracking in sports. Using a standard wireless tablet running Android or iOS and connected via Wi-Fi, the Venue Medical Officers can freely access selected video channels to assess the medical situation on the pitch. The wireless connection allows the tablet to be used remotely from the VAR server. The system is gesture-controlled and allows quick selection of the required channel to review the incident. To examine the situation as closely as possible, the video can be rewound/forwarded, played back at variable speeds, zoomed in and out, and the channels can be switched.

Another new feature for international football competitions is the introduction of a Video Coach, who can analyze the video feeds and make recommendations on game tactics in real time. In line with this trend, FIFA now requires each team participating in such competitions to be provided with 2 dedicated Video Coach workplaces in order to analyze on-field incidents more accurately. Each team is now guaranteed to have a replay tablet on the team bench and a replay device at the media tribune desk.

Thanks to the remote workplace feature, videoReferee servers can easily handle medical tracking and video coaching tasks for both teams at the same time. A single videoReferee server can support a replay tablet for the medical staff, a replay tablet for each team bench, and a workplace at each team’s media tribune desk, for a total of 5 additional independent workplaces. The media tribune replay devices are based on standard laptops connected to the server via Ethernet and equipped with dedicated Control-VR panels, allowing team officials to interact with video feeds independently.

Depending on the rules of a particular competition, video feeds can be limited to only those channels and angles that are relevant to the decisions being made. For example, the goal line feeds may be excluded.

In summary, one videoReferee server can simultaneously provide the operation of 6-8 workplaces, distributed among the Video Coaches of competing teams, Venue Medical Officer and VARs. Our system can complete all tasks at once – not only to ensure fair play, but also to resolve player health issues and help team Video Coaches make the right strategic decisions.