Football shirts are being developed which have their own on-board computer, which will be able to track the pace and quickening of the wearer.

Researchers at the University of Birmingham, UK, who are specialists in “wearable” computers, are exploring ways of remotely monitoring the performance of people playing sports.

This will help to tackle the difficulties in analysing aspects of players’ games such as speed – which can normally only be explored in a laboratory setting.

With computer-carrying Football shirts, which send back data through a radio network, the performance of players in a live match can be recorded with great accuracy.

World Cup row

The three-year project is a pan-European academic venture, with universities in Germany, Italy, Austria and Holland also taking part. The lead institution is the National Technical University of Athens, in Greece, which is examining ways of inserting computers into  a Liverpool football shirts.

Such a computerised football would mean that goal-line disputes, such as England’s goal in the 1966 World Cup Final against West Germany, could be resolved with mathematical precision.

Researchers at the University of Birmingham have so far produced a prototype of a computer integrated with a sports shirt, which has a monitoring and transmitting system inside a tabard-style attachment.

In a spin

Lecturer in interactive systems design, Chris Baber, says that this equipment will now need to be reduced in size, so that it does not impede the player wearing the football shirt.

And the electronics will have to be connected in a way that will address another practical problem for a football shirt: a spin in the washing machine.

Dr Baber says that the wiring would endure a wash, but the other components might need to be put into unobtrusive detachable pockets or patches to protect football shirts.

In the current three-year research project, which is receiving £200,000 funding, the Birmingham academics are considering that perhaps four or five players might wear these computer-carrying shirts – called the “Sensvest”.

But Dr Baber says that in the longer term an entire team could wear such shirts, and that a radio network could monitor each of the players individually.