V.A.R OR V.A.NAH YOU’RE ALRIGHT?

V.A.R, or Video assistant referee for the pernickety, is a technological aid implemented into the game of football to help prevent the officials making mistakes that could cost one of the teams the game. Only recently has it been placed into the realms of English football, and oh boy is it having teething problems. You’d struggle to find someone who isn’t skeptical of its use. Most of us don’t really know what it’s being used for or what it adds, but thankfully, you don’t have to look any further than this article to find out what it does.

So lets run over the basics of what it covers. There are four possible incidents it can have an influence over. Goals, Red cards, Penalties and cases of mistaken identity. What is the centre of most fans concern for using V.A.R is the sheer time it takes to review incidents. On average it takes supposedly 30-40 seconds to go over the footage and check for incidents that may have been missed by the officials and could have effected the game, e.g. leading up to a goal maybe the ball going out of play or an offside.

There are plenty of limitations it would appear, with one of them involving red cards. V.A.R can only review incidents if it will only result in a direct red card, not a single yellow or second yellow card. The only way a yellow card can be given out is as a result of a penalty being reviewed and it being discovered that there is a case of simulation and the player has dived.

Another question is, who is running the V.A.R? So the Video assistant referee is run by someone based in Uxbridge who is in control of several cameras and can watch the match from several different angles. In fact they will be in control of 12 camera angles in total which will allow them to filter back information to the on-field referee.

Currently in the UK, V.A.R is only in use in selected FA Cup games, so it has very little bearing on the English game in the grand scheme of things. Not to say it won’t in the future, with plans for a consultation and a decision to be made in the summer as to whether the Premier League implements this system into the domestic league fixtures are in the works. I know, the thought of V.A.R in all league games is a scary prospect, but it’s nothing new, after all the Italians have been testing the system for a year already.

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