GoalRef is an

association football Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is t ...

goal-line technology In many outdoor ball sports, a goal line is a line in front of goal post and which a team attempts to advance the ball or puck towards to score a goal or points. In particular, see: * Football pitch for usage of the term in soccer * Goal line (g ...

system developed by German research institute Fraunhofer in association with

Select Sport Select Sport A.S. is a Danish sports equipment manufacturer based in Glostrup, Denmark. As of 2008, Select Sport provides the Danish Football Association with footballs, and also several clubs in the Danish, Belgian, Portugal and Russian t ...

. It works by detecting the passage of the ball using magnetic induction. Along with

Hawk-Eye Hawk-Eye is a computer vision system used in numerous sports such as cricket, tennis, Gaelic football, badminton, hurling, rugby union, association football and volleyball, to visually track the trajectory of the ball and display a profile o ...

GoalControl GoalControl is a German company based in Aachen, which has developed a goal-line technology for Association football.The Goal Control system features 14 high speed cameras which are mounted around the stadium, 7 directed to each of the goals. Thes ...

and Cairos it is one of four systems approved for use in the professional game by the

International Football Association Board The International Football Association Board (IFAB) is the body that determines the Laws of the Game of association football. IFAB was founded in 1886 to agree standardised Laws for international competition, and has since acted as the "guardi ...

(IFAB).

History

GoalRef was originally developed by a Danish organisation commissioned by Select Sport who entered the system for consideration by the

International Handball Federation The International Handball Federation (IHF) is the administrative and controlling body for handball and beach handball. IHF is responsible for the organisation of handball's major international tournaments, notably the IHF World Men's Handball ...

. In 2011 Fraunhofer became lead partner in GoalRef alongside the original inventor, and entered the system in the first stage testing being conducted for IFAB by EMPA (Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology). GoalRef and Hawk-Eye were the only systems that proceeded to EMPA's