FIFA to give VAR green light at World Cup

FIFA are expected to rubber-stamp video assistant referee technology (VAR) for this summer’s World Cup despite lingering opposition from within and outside football.

Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA, will oversee the governing body’s meeting in Bogota happy to give the green light to the system despite a long, personal spell of scepticism.

“VAR is something positive that will bring much more to the transparency of football,” said Infantino ahead of the FIFA Council meeting starting tomorrow.

“Video refereeing isn’t going to be the solution to everything in football. What we want to do is avoid resounding mistakes by referees.”

At the World Cup in Russia from June 14-July 15, VAR will be used to judge whether or not a goal has been scored, analyse whether a penalty should be awarded, decide on red cards and rectify if a player has been mistakenly sanctioned.

The game’s lawmakers, the International Football Association Board (IFAB), had decided two weeks ago at its meeting in Zurich to support VAR at the World Cup.

VAR has been trialled since 2016 by around 20 federations including the German Bundesliga and Italian Serie A.

But it has not been universally welcomed with even UEFA, the European governing body, still to be convinced.

“Nobody knows exactly how VAR will work. There is already a lot of confusion,” said UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin who insists that VAR will not be used in next season’s Champions League.

“I am not at all against it but we must better explain when it will be used. We will see at the World Cup.”

One of the problems that dogs VAR, say its critics, is not the accuracy of its decisions but the time it takes to arrive at them.

It’s a drawback which has left many fans and purists frustrated that the flow of a game is interrupted.

“The intervention of VAR takes one minute on average in each game. If we lose a minute to correct mistakes, I think we have done something good,” said Infantino.