VAR

[thedarkside 0]

Having watched the Iran and Portugal game last night and listening to the various pundits etc I think that the original ethos of VAR is being lost. I thought VAR was brought in for two reasons, to allow the referee to make informed decisions on incidents that he may have missed and to clarify incidents which he may have seen at a distance and was unsure. Unfortunately pundits tend to direct their vitriol at the referee or VAR referee (and I agree there has been a number of very arbitrary decisions made - I''m being generous there) But basically VAR was introduced because of cheating! Players can''t adopt the moral high ground when it is their disreputable behaviour which has initiated this procedure.

Secondly why isn''t FIFA reviewing VAR after each game and assessing the referees decisions - I have a bit of a sneaking suspicion that some of the VAR referees don''t want it to work and that is why we are getting so many questionable decisions. Or am I just being cynical?

[Bethnal Yellow and Green 1,557]

Nearly all the refs at the World Cup will not have used VAR before - there were always going to be obviously teething issues. I’m glad refs haven’t felt they need to review every little decision, although there have clearly been times when they should have done.

FIFA review every referring performance after every game (VAR or no-VAR). But they won’t want to make changes mid-tournament, there will be a full scale review after the World Cup to see what went well and what didn’t go well. A large part of the issue has been pundits and commentators not knowing the rules around VAR and what can and cannot be reviewed.

There will always be human error in reffing as long as there are human refs, but what we have seen from this tournament is games being allowed to flow and lots more goals - that is potentially a positive from VAR.

Players will only stop diving and rolling around once they have got used to VAR being around, those acts often aren’t premeditated but instinctive - it is hard to have lucidity of thought in some of the most highly pressured games in your life.

I was against VAR as I knew it would never be able to deliver what people wanted it to, it will never remove contraversy as even after watching replays people generally can’t agree on the ‘correct’ decision.

[Bill 1,788]

Or simply to break the game up so as to not only introduce sponsor breaks, but move the game towards a stop start form of entertainment which benefits from an ..... is it or isn''t it format.