Dabanović: Technology is changing the trial

The best Montenegrin football referee, Nikola Dabanović, was among the referees invited to the UEFA seminar for elite referees, where special attention was paid to the new generation of technology for automatic offside detection.

At the seminar at the headquarters of the European Football House, referees were introduced to the latest technologies and guidelines that they will apply in the upcoming season, and the focus, among other things, was SAOT (Semi-Automated Offside Technology), a system that will further speed up decision-making in offside situations in the Champions League starting this season.

Dabanović points out that new technology will bring significant changes to the work of judges.

"I take one very important message from this UEFA seminar - technology is entering a new phase and significantly changing the way we make offside decisions," said Dabanović.

"In the Champions League from this season, with SAOT, the referee will no longer have to wait for the assistant's signal in situations where there is an offside. The system will detect offside in real time, and the referee will immediately receive information via an audible signal in the headset, so that the game can be stopped in time. The goal is that we no longer end up in a situation where the action ends with a goal, and then we have to come back later and cancel the goal due to offside."

Dabanović points out that this is a major evolution in football refereeing.

"At the seminar, we received detailed guidelines on how to manage this system and how to use the technology in the right way. The technology was not introduced for the sake of referees, but for the sake of football - to make decisions as fast, precise and fair as possible."

For the best Crnore referee, this is not a "fight of man against technology."

"The referee remains the one who controls the match, but a modern referee must be ready to learn every day, follow the development of technology and adapt to changes. Football is changing, and refereeing must evolve with it," says Dabanović.