Platini to see referee trial in person

Additional assistants
The Group 5 mini-tournament in Slovenia features the hosts, Norway, Slovakia and Armenia, beginning today and continuing until Wednesday. It will see – in addition to the match referee and two assistant referees on the touchline – two extra assistants placed behind the goalline, with the mission of focusing on incidents which happen in the penalty area, such as fouls or misconduct. Further trials are planned later this year in the U19 qualifying round, in Groups 1 and 7, in Hungary and Cyprus.

IFAB-approved
An experiment with five match officials – one referee and four assistants – comes after football's lawmakers, the International Football Association Board (IFAB) approved the conducting of such a test at its meeting in Scotland last March. The IFAB, the custodian of the Laws of the Game, is composed of England's Football Association, the Scottish Football Association, the Football Association of Wales, the Irish Football Association and world football's governing body FIFA.

Goalline technology
The use of five referees for a game, to facilitate the match officials' decision-making process, is independent from another proposal which has been put forward in recent times – the use of goalline technology. The two unrelated items were discussed as separate agenda points at the IFAB meeting in Scotland. While the IFAB agreed that experiments with five referees should be undertaken, the issue of goalline technology was put on ice and tests in this area were halted until further notice. On the latter point the IFAB discussed, among other things, elements such as the human aspect of the game and its relation to referees' decision-making, as well as the simplicity of the technology in question.