Fifa's offside rule graphic failed during Switzerland's 1-1 draw with Qatar, and the review had to fall back on drawn lines. The delay left the penalty sequence in Santa Clara under a cloud for four and a half hours before Fifa released the images.
Switzerland's move ended with Breel Embolo converting a penalty in the World Cup Group B match on Saturday. Before Fifa's statement, Gary Neville said on ITV, "We all think [it was offside]".
Fifa in Santa Clara
Fifa said "a brief technical outage prevented the onside animation graphic from being generated". It also said, "The workflow of the VAR was not affected by this issue and followed the normal procedure in checking the on-field decision."
The governing body added, "The lines used by the VAR to check the position of the relevant players did not show the attacking player to be in an offside position in either of the two situations immediately before the penalty decision." Those two situations involved Breel Embolo in the build-up and Remo Freuler before he was fouled by Qatar goalkeeper Mahmoud Abunada.
Remo Freuler and Breel Embolo
Two Switzerland players could potentially have been offside in the move, which is why the missing graphic drew attention once the penalty stood. Fifa had promoted its new enhanced semi-automated offside system before the World Cup and had scanned every player to create unique, lifelike avatars, but the outage forced officials back to drawing lines to the players and on the pitch.
That gap matters because the onside animation was supposed to be the visual that settled the dispute quickly. Instead, the images arrived long after the match situation had already become the talking point, with the delay stretching to four and a half hours.
World Cup Group B
The match finished 1-1, so the penalty and the offside check sat at the center of the result in Santa Clara. For Switzerland, the sequence left the draw intact but put the technology itself under scrutiny after a system built to sharpen offside calls had to revert to a slower manual presentation.
