More repeats
REPORTS MAKE NO mistake about it: the Video Assistant Referee system is here to stay. No amount of evidence is about to reverse that decision.
Sources at the International Football Association Board (IFAB), the body responsible for making football’s laws, have little doubt that a meeting on Monday will ratify the system pretty much in its current form for formal inclusion in the rulebook, subject to what looks like being landslide approval at their AGM in March.
That would then give FIFA president Gianni Infantino the green light to make video replays part of this summer’s World Cup – although even with a ‘no’ vote, FIFA could still apply to use the system on a trial basis in Russia.
The bottom line is that the game’s big players all want it. Even with the fuss at Stamford Bridge on Wednesday, Chelsea manager Antonio Conte’s demands were for it to be made better, not scrapped.
Yesterday Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger joined him in heralding the inevitability of the technology. “What you want is to England the system of a brief verbal check from the VAR – rather than it being completely “silent” – puts the match official out of his suspense. VAR has been in use all season in Serie A, the Bundesliga and 13 other leagues worldwide. In Italy, Juventus coach Massimiliano Allegri complained that the game was “turning into baseball” – although the IFAB insist “there is no time pressure to review the decision quickly as accuracy is more important than speed”. Accuracy has been in question in the States, when a decision to send off New England Revolution’s Xavier Kouassi using VAR was overturned on appeal. In a magazine poll in Germany, 47 per cent of players were said to be in favour of ditching video technology completely, although the IFAB attribute that to the particular circumstances in the country which eventually led to the VAR project manager Hellmut Krug being sacked after accusations of bias. Things have settled down, according to the IFAB, on the past two matchdays since the resumption of the Bundesliga programme following the winter break. Perhaps all that is needed is a little bit less fast forward and a good deal more slow motion – because nobody is about to hit the stop button.