REFEREES will wear bodycams during the Club World Cup, it has been confirmed.
Footage from the cameras will be readily available to broadcasters during matches at the competition.
The move was confirmed by the chairman of the Fifa referees committee, Pierluigi Collina.
Collina said: “It is a good chance to offer the viewers a new experience, in terms of images taken from a perspective, from an angle of vision which was never offered before.
“It’s a combination of new experience for broadcasters and also for coaching purposes.
“Having the possibility to see what the referee sees is important in the debriefing, to evaluate how the call was made by the referee, which was his view, and so on.”
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Referee bodycams were first trialled in English football at the grassroots level last season.
The trials were then expanded for this season after results showed a decrease in abuse toward match officials.
In the Premier League, Jarred Gillett became the first referee to wear a bodycam during last season’s clash between Crystal Palace and Manchester United in May, a game won 4-0 by Palace.
That game was a one-off to capture footage for a programme promoting match officials.
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Other nations have also taken to using bodycams.
The Bundesliga saw its first instance of a referee wearing a bodycam in February 2024 during a game between Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich.
Football in the United States, where the refreshed 32-team Club World Cup will be played out this summer, has seen the use of bodycam footage in recent seasons in Major League Soccer.
Manchester City and Chelsea are the English clubs who will be present at the tournament.
It will run from June 15 to July 13.
The early scheduling of the post-season tournament has seen the Premier League open up a second summer transfer window to allow teams to sign players before the competition begins.
It will then be shut again during the tournament before re-opening afterwards for the remainder of the summer.
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Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
