The History (and Future) of VAR

 by Lavakushan M

What is VAR and how will it impact the future? 

VAR stands for Video Assistant Referee and it is a system that helps give decisions if the referee can’t trust themselves with their decisions. VAR has a lot of history to become what it is today.

During the early 2010s, the VAR was envisioned by the Refereeing 2.0 project which was under the assistance of the Royal Netherlands Football Association (KNVB). There were mock trials throughout the 2012-13 season in the Eredivisie (the highest league of Netherlands football). The KNVB petitioned the International Football Association Board (IFAB) to allow the use of the validating system during more extensive trials. The IFAB approved the trials that would commence; one IFAB secretary said that due to the people using 4G or Wi-fi in the stadium they didn’t want the referees to make arbitrary decisions which the viewers at home can see clearly. 

The FIFA President at the time, Sepp Blatter, refused any proposals for any form of video review to be used in games. Throughout his presidency, the president vehemently opposed the introduction of the futuristic machine that would challenge the live decisions of the referees. He also thought that it would interfere with the game too much. Blatter was forced out of his presidency role due to unrelated corruption scandals so his successor, Gianni Infantino, gladly accepted the VAR proposal. 

The first official live trial of the facilitative machine was in 2016 in a friendly match between PSV and FC Eindhoven. The first official (non-friendly) match that they used VAR was on the 21st of September 2016 in the first round of the KNVB cup tie between Ajax and Willem II. 

VAR has been associated with a lot of games around the world but there were some controversial incidents that made people think that VAR isn’t the system that they expected it would be. One certain incident was in the 2023-24 season just 2 days before Christmas when there was a match between Liverpool and Arsenal on Matchday 18 of the Premier League.  During this match, Odegaard made a controversial handball inside the penalty box in the first half, which should’ve been easily awarded as a penalty in Liverpool’s favour but due to the scandalous technology, that has been giving wrong decisions over the past few years, called VAR, the decision of giving a penalty was not given due to it. After the match, the referees’ chief, Howard Webb, had said:

‘The game expects a penalty in this situation. I would agree.’

VAR has been the cause of some negatives in the game of football but also has contributed to a lot of positive aspects of football. VAR is the system that has revolutionised the game of football. 

In the future, VAR will still play a main role in football; with technological advancements, VAR will become more accurate and reliable. VAR could be implemented in other sports such as basketball and baseball. 

To wrap it all up, VAR will revolutionise the industry of the football world and when the time comes the system will expand into other sports (even cricket will obtain the use of VAR). VAR will soon reduce the number of erroneous mistakes and football will become one of the most equitable sports in the world. We will see circumstantiated decisions which won’t affect the league games or even deciding games (such as the UCL semi-finals and finals).

Statistics:

• 96% of the decisions made by VAR are correct.

• 13% of people don’t support VAR

• It takes about 20 seconds to review footage from the VAR

• 57.4% of incidents relating to VAR is about goals and penalties

• In 2018, 86% of people were in favour of the VAR

• 69.1% of games are reviewed by the IFAB so they don’t need any VAR intervention