Football body approves VAR for WC

ZURICH: Football’s lawmakers on Saturday approved video assistant referee technology (VAR) for this summer’s World Cup, in one of the biggest changes to the sport in years.

The International Football Association Board (IFAB), meeting in Zurich, rubber-stamped a move already backed by FIFA’s top brass, including president Gianni Infantino. “We came to the conclusion that VAR is good for football”, Infantino told reporters shortly after IFAB announced the decision. He added that the final decision to use the technology at the World Cup in Russia will be made when the FIFA Council — world football’s top decision-making body — meets in Colombia on March 15 and 16.

IFAB said in a press release that the decision “represents a new era for football with video assistance for referees helping to increase fairness in the game”. Separately, the IFAB meeting also approved a fourth substitute in the case of extra time. VAR can only be used when there is doubt surrounding any of four key game-changing situations: goals, penalty decisions, straight red cards or mistaken identity of a sanctioned player. It has already been implemented in top European leagues including the German Bundesliga and Italy’s Serie A. Spain’s La Liga on Friday began training officials ahead of the technology’s expected introduction next season but opinion is still divided.

Players and managers have complained of referees being too eager to defer to technology, while fans in stadiums have been left in the dark as to why decisions are being made.

UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin said this week that European football’s governing body would not introduce VAR in next season’s Champions League due to ongoing “confusion” surrounding its use.

Infantino conceded that he too was once a sceptic. “I was pretty much against it a couple of years ago and I changed my mind because I studied it,” he said. He pointed to IFAB research from 1,000 matches showing that referee accuracy without VAR — which stood at 93 percent — rose to 99 percent with video assistance.

With VAR, referee decision-making was “almost perfect”, Infantino said. Others have voiced concern about video assistance slowing down the game, possibly breaking a team’s momentum or diminishing fan experience by forcing people to abruptly halt a celebration while a goal is reviewed.