LEIPZIG, Germany – The high technology “smart ball” that will help officials on close calls around the goal won’t be ready for use at next year’s World Cup soccer finals.

FIFA president Sepp Blatter said Monday that plans to give the ball a second test this month at the World Club Championship in Japan have been scrapped.

The balls, embedded with a microchip, send a signal to a device on the referee’s wrist if they cross the goal line. They were first tested at the under-17 World Cup in Peru earlier this year.

FIFA general secretary Urs Linsi called those results positive, but with “room for improvement.”

Adidas, which makes the balls, said they will be used officially when the tracking system – which involves 12 antennae sending radio signals to the referee’s device – is more advanced. The smart ball, if effective, would end years of controversy over whether the ball crossed the line.

In other Cup news, FIFA’s World Cup Organizing Committee will decide today on the seedings for the 32 finalists involved in next year’s tournament in Germany.

The host nation will be seeded in slot A1 in the match schedule and play the tournament’s opening match in Munich on June 9. Seven other countries will also be placed in the top pool and kept apart in the draw for the first round.

Friday’s draw will be broadcast live to around 150 countries with an estimated audience of around 320 million people.

FIFA has not confirmed how the seedings will be decided but hinted that the same method used in 2002 will be used again. That involved taking the performances from the two previous World Cup finals, combined with an average position based on the FIFA world rankings from the past three years to establish a coefficient for each team.