Applaud VAR – technology is better than Hand of God
This is the first time VAR will be used at a World Cup and I’m really confident it is going to be a positive thing and will lead to a far cleaner tournament free from the sort of controversial incidents that have soured too many games in the past.
I think we are going to see a big reduction in things like diving and play-acting because the players will know they can be punished, not just after the game – as we have seen in England this season – but during it.
The fact you can be sent off for an off-the-ball incident, while the game is going on, if one of the video referees spots something on one of the 33 cameras they will have access to, means it is not just the players who will be penalised. There will be collective responsibility, because the team will suffer if one of them is sent off, either for a straight red-card offence, or a second yellow card. It is punishment in real time, not retrospective when the game has already been decided.
It won’t take long for managers to cotton on to that and hopefully we will have a World Cup without the sort of gamesmanship and blatant cheating that has tarnished previous tournaments.
It is long overdue. The work Fifa has done, in consultation with the referees’ committees, has been crucial. It has worked on this really hard and looked at the problems there have been elsewhere.
Think of the things that have decided the outcome of games in the past – Diego Maradona’s handball in the 1986 World Cup, Frank Lampard’s goal that wasn’t given when the ball had clearly crossed the line in 2010 – and they are just the ones that had a huge impact on England matches.
There are so many others that have ended up deciding games for other countries and this is the biggest football tournament in the world.
It is not just the introduction of the technology, though. It is the way it will be used in Russia. We have to accept that this is going to be part and parcel of the game at the elite level and Fifa is making every effort to speed up the process.
It is looking to solve the problems we have seen in England, with spectators standing around wondering what is happening.
Now they will have a big screen, which will show that VAR is in operation, signals the referees use will be much clearer and, when each decision is made, the spectators will be able to see it.
VAR is there to help the referees make the big, important decisions. It is not there to sanitise the game and the fact there will be so many cameras and
How VAR will work in Russia
The VAR will operate in all 64 matches and will be used to assess:
Goals and offences leading up to a goal.
Penalty decisions and offences leading up to a penalty.
Direct redcard incidents.
Cases of mistaken identity. The VAR team looks for clear and obvious mistakes and communicates with the referee only when it sees these or for serious incidents missed by the match referee.
It is located in a centralised video operation room in Moscow.
The VAR has three assistants and all are top FIFA match officials.
a total of four officials, working with four replay operators, all looking at different things, should mean the system should work well.
The speed with which these decisions are made should also improve. I know some people are still sceptical, but this is going to be a good thing, which will improve the World Cup – not damage it as a spectacle.
Keith Hackett is a former referee and resident expert on Youaretheref