On the evening of June 17, the Belgian team unexpectedly lost 0-1 to Slovakia in the opening match of EURO 2024. Ivan Schranz was the one who scored the only goal to help Slovakia win a historic victory at this year's European Championship.

Notably, Belgian striker Romelu Lukaku had the ball in the opponent's net twice but both were disallowed.

The first incident occurred in the 56th minute, when the semi-automatic offside detection technology VAR confirmed that Lukaku was behind the Slovakian defense. The second incident occurred in the 86th minute, when the Snickometer technology - appearing for the first time at EURO 2024 - determined that Lois Openda handled the ball before passing it to Lukaku.

Accordingly, the official ball of EURO 2024 has integrated a microchip in the center (motion sensor can track every touch at a speed of 500 times per second) and detects Openda's hand contact with the ball.

This is the first time Snickometer technology has been introduced at EURO. In terms of operation, the graphics leading to the referee's decisions on the field will be sent to the broadcaster, updated in real time with visual images.

The developer says the Snickometer technology is sensitive enough to determine whether the ball touched a hand before it entered the goal or whether a player was offside at the time the ball was kicked.

Previously, Snickometer technology was applied at the 2022 World Cup and was more or less effective.

Typically, in a controversial situation in the match between Portugal and Uruguay in the group stage, this technology determined that Portugal's goal had never touched Ronaldo's head before entering the net, despite the 39-year-old star celebrating.

Afterwards, Adidas also announced the tracking results showing that Ronaldo had not actually made the final touch and the goal still belonged to Bruno Fernandes.