VAR gets green light despite backlash
Lawmakers vote to accept controversial technology World Cup to adopt system – but will Premier League?
Video technology was yesterday fully approved for use within football from the World Cup onwards, despite the game’s rule makers admitting it was still plagued by problems.
In defiance of a growing backlash against the introduction of Video Assistant Referees to the sport, the International Football Association Board took the historic decision to incorporate them into the Laws of the Game at its annual meeting at Fifa’s Zurich headquarters.
Gianni Infantino, the Fifa president, also vowed to forge ahead with plans to use VAR at this summer’s World Cup, even though he and his fellow IFAB voters conceded two years of trials had failed to eliminate some of the teething problems that saw it branded “an absolute shambles” during Tottenham Hotspur’s FA Cup fifth-round replay win over Rochdale last week.
Those problems could see Premier League clubs block it from being used in the world’s richest league next season, a snub both Infantino and the chief executive of the Football Association, Martin Glenn, sought to play down yesterday.
But following a vote of IFAB (made up of the home nations and Fifa) that was described as “unanimous”, Glenn also acknowledged mounting complaints about the system. “We have to speed up reviews and, linked to that, the communication to the crowd has to be better because people aren’t really sure what’s going on,” he said, admitting VAR wrongly chalked off a goal during the Spurs-Rochdale game.
Infantino and Glenn both denied that a rejection by the Premier League during a vote of its clubs next month would be a major issue, but the latter declared using VAR “would make even more sense” in “the most valuable league in the world”, where “a bad decision has got disproportionate cost”.
A final decision on using video technology at the World Cup will be taken by Fifa’s council in less than two weeks, with Infantino saying he would lobby for its introduction. He added: “The most important competition in the world, which is the World Cup, in 2018, can certainly not afford to be decided on a potential mistake of a referee.”
Infantino also declared video re- views would bring “more fairness” in the game, saying: “We are living in a digital age, a fast-paced age, and we cannot be oblivious to technological advance.”
Fifa later confirmed that big-screen replays of incidents decided by VAR will be shown at Russia 2018.
IFAB was split going into yesterday’s meeting over whether now was the right time for it to formally endorse video technology, rather than extending trials of the system. The chief executive of the Welsh FA, Jonathan Ford, confirmed he had been “sceptical” beforehand but had been won over by “overwhelming” evidence from about 1,000 VAR matches worldwide.
Data collected from those games showed an improvement in decisionmaking accuracy from 93 per cent to almost 99 per cent, that the number of refereeing mistakes had plunged from one in every three matches to one in every 19 and that the average playing time lost as a result of the VAR was less than a minute.
Glenn pointed out the 13 VAR games in England represented just “one per cent” of the total sample and that countries with more experience had become better at using the system, adding: “I’m not going to ignore criticism but I think we need to put things in context.”
Infantino said he could “guarantee” World Cup referees would have sufficient training to use the system at the World Cup, while also claiming it had already helped improve player behaviour, because “Big Brother is watching you”.