Fifa president says VAR ‘gets us closer’ to perfection
Gianni Infantino is confident that Video Assistant Referees (VAR) can have a “positive impact” on football.
The Fifa president spoke again yesterday in support of the system as it was approved on a permanent basis at the International Football Association Board’s (IFAB) annual general meeting in Zurich, effectively greenlighting it to be used at the World Cup finals in Russia this summer.
Following the IFAB’s backing, the Fifa Council will sanction the use of the VAR when it meets in Colombia later this month, and Infantino is confident it will be a success.
“Of course, it will have an impact on the World Cup and on the matches, and it will have a positive impact on the matches, this is what the studies show,” he said in a news conference, referring to independent analysis conducted by Belgian university KU Leuven since March 2016.
“From the 1,000 matches, approximately, that were part of the experiment, the level of accuracy of the decisions taken by the referees increased to 99 per cent. It’s almost perfect.
“Perfection in our world does not exist, but VAR certainly gets us closer. I was extremely sceptical personally on VAR, but we tested it, and I personally came quite a long way.
“I can guarantee our referees which will be at the World Cup will be ready. They have trained for the last two years.”
The IFAB confirmed the VAR will be used, with the aim of reducing unfairness caused by ‘clear and obvious errors’ or ‘serious missed incidents’.
This will be in relation to whether a goal should be given or not, if an incident is a penalty or not, whether a player should be given a straight red card, and any cases of mistaken identity when cautioning or red carding the wrong player.
Infantino added: “As of today, video assistant referees are part of football and this is certainly very important news. Together with our colleagues we have taken some very important decisions today. We had, as you can imagine, a very intense morning, fully aware of our responsibility to take an important decision for football.”
Not all of football has been convinced by VAR though.
Earlier this week Aleksander Ceferin, the president of Uefa, had said the system would not be used in the Uefa Champions League next season as more work needed to be done to refine it.
“I am not at all against it, but it needs to be better explained when it is being used. We will see at the World Cup,” Ceferin said. “It could be a good project, useful for football, but we must not rush to take such decisions.”