Football that says if it's all over...

Perhaps someone should tell them they are 38 years too late.

But German footballers are set to test a space-age ball that could have ruled once and for all whether Geoff Hurst's famous goal on English football's finest day really crossed the line.

It was a Soviet linesman who, in the 1966 World Cup Final, gave England their crucial third goal when Hurst's shot bounced down off the bar.

Time, clearly, has not healed old wounds. A German newspaper last week suggested the Queen apologise for the goal during her state visit.

However, a retired Italian referee believes he can end such arguments once and for all.

Gabriele Cruciali has invented a football containing a microchip that links with sensors across the goal-line.

If the entire ball crosses the line, it sends a signal to a wristwatch worn by a referee or linesman.

Mr Cruciali, 50, has worked on his invention for 30 years - motivated by a desire to protect fellow refs from harm. In 1976, he needed several

stitches after fans attacked him for wrongly disallowing a goal.

'I thought, this will keep happening to refs unless I can find a way of knowing for definite whether the ball crossed the line,' he said.

Mr Cruciali's 'i-ball' will be tried soon in the Bundesliga, Germany's equivalent of the Premiership. 'I hope everything goes well in Germany. If it does, we can launch the ball all over the world,' he told Zoo magazine.

Other hi-tech systems have been tried in the past. German academics devised a 'Smartball', used for an international between Germany and Lithuania last year.

But the ideas, which would cost an estimated £1million to develop, have not gone beyond preliminary trials.