According to the Spanish newspaper AS, FIFA issued a statement explaining the reason for the offside lines not appearing on the screen, despite the game being reviewed via video technology.
The International Federation said: “During the match between Qatar and Switzerland in the San Francisco Bay Area, a short technical malfunction prevented the creation of the offside graphic animation before the penalty kick awarded to Switzerland in the 14th minute.”
He added: “The problem was resolved quickly. The operation of the video technology was not affected by this defect, and the normal procedure was followed to verify the decision taken on the field.”
FIFA confirmed that the lines used by video technology did not show the attacking player being in an offside position in any of the two cases that directly preceded the penalty kick decision.
Retired English star Gary Neville criticized FIFA after not displaying the lines to the fans, saying: “Why doesn’t FIFA show us the information at a time when it already suffers from a lot of mistrust towards it? This is a dictatorship: the idea of them keeping this data internally and not displaying it to the fans is completely ridiculous.”
