Soccer Football - FIFA World Cup 2026 - Group J - Austria v Jordan - San Francisco Bay Area Stadium, Santa Clara, California, U.S. - June 16, 2026 A big screen displays a VAR review message.REUTERS/YONHAP
Park Kyung-ryul
The author is a professor at the KAIST Graduate School of Science and Technology Policy and the director of the Center for Science, Technology and Global Development.
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It is World Cup season once again. Football has long been celebrated for the idea that "the ball is round": the unpredictability that allows underdogs to defeat favorites and the collective exhilaration when a long-awaited goal finally arrives. Those moments explain why the tournament captivates billions. Yet the history of the World Cup is also a history of controversy, disputed decisions and refereeing mistakes.
Fans still remember Diego Maradona's infamous "Hand of God" goal in 1986 and Geoff Hurst's shot in the 1966 final, which was awarded despite failing to clearly cross the goal line. Such incidents became symbols of human error. The image of a dejected coach leaving a news conference after saying that "refereeing mistakes are part of the game" has become increasingly rare.
Today's stadium has instead become a vast system of technological verification. High-speed cameras capable of recording 500 frames per second are installed around the goalposts and beneath the stadium roof. A connected ball equipped with motion-sensing chips continuously transmits data about every touch and movement. The Video Assistant Referee, or VAR, reconstructs even the narrowest offside situations through three-dimensional animation, revealing details that human eyesight cannot reliably distinguish.
Japan's victory over Spain at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar ultimately hinged on a margin of just 1.88 millimeters (0.074 inches). Kaoru Mitoma's cross appeared impossible to judge from television images alone, but goal-line technology confirmed that the ball had remained in play. A historic result was determined not by instinct but by measurement.
Perhaps it is no longer enough to say that the ball is round. Judgment has become square, confined within the geometry of camera angles, pixels and algorithms. In that digital space, truth is reconstructed less by human perception than by technological actors. Players pause their celebrations while spectators postpone their emotional release, waiting for VAR to deliver its verdict before joy or disappointment can fully unfold.
Technology was introduced to reinforce the authority of referees, yet it has gradually transformed that authority itself. What we witness on the pitch may foreshadow more than the future of football. As technology acquires ever greater precision in judging our everyday lives, the same question confronts us beyond the stadium. If technology promises fairness, what remains for human judgment?
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
