KSA ref chief cool on VAR
LONDON: Saudi Arabia referee's chief Mark Clattenburg is looking forward to an expansion of Video Assistant Referees (VAR), which may be used in next year's World Cup, but is guarding against it becoming a crutch for match officials.
Major League Soccer and Germany's Bundesliga are among the leagues experimenting with VAR but Clattenburg says it needs to be used liberally.
“I see many problems in all the leagues — United States, Germany, Holland, Australia — because many people are trying to use it too much,” he said. “We don't want to stop the flow of the game, but we want to stop the scandal, the bad decision where everybody in football goes: That's a dive. That's a penalty.”
He cited the decision by Romanian referee Ovidiu Hategan to call a hand ball of Northern Ireland's Corry Evans, which led to a Switzerland goal in a World Cup playoff this month. Hategan was not among the 36 referees announced Nov. 18 for a pre-World Cup seminar, a list that included 10 from Europe and two from the United States: Mark Geiger and Jair Murrufo.
“We want video where, for example the Northern-IrelandSwitzerland game, it was clearly not a hand ball,” Clattenburg said. “This is the one we want to change. And I think all referees in the world want to have it. Why? Because they don't want to be criticized for making a bad error.”
Clattenburg maintains officials' errors have not increased. They just get noticed more.
“The game has got quicker,” he said. “People say referees are getting worse. They’re not. All that happens is we have more cameras, and it highlights the mistakes.” He attended NBC's first Premier League Fan Fest at the South Street Seaport, where the network broadcast its studio show Saturday. He plans to return to NBC every few months.
“I want to give people an insight into what referees think, how they act,” he said. “Now I'm free to do media work. When you're in the Premier League, you're not allowed to speak, and now it's nice that I can pass on my experiences, pass on my knowledge.”