June 2 – Football’s lawmaking body wants to keep the use of video replays to a minimum if they become standard practise for deciding contentious refereeing decisions.
IFAB, often accused of being too conservative, approved live testing of video assistant referees (VARs) in March last year and FIFA president Gianni Infantino has already said that he would like to use them at the 2018 World Cup.
IFAB has made it clear that video replays can only be used for four game-changing criteria – disputed goals, penalties, red cards and mistaken identity.
IFAB technical director David Elleray wants it to stay that way.
“The idea is not to check every decision… It is to overturn the ones that make the headlines,” he said following a workshop in Switzerland, adding that he wanted “minimum interference, maximum benefit”.
“We would rather have one review in four matches than four in every match.”
Video assistance was introduced for the first time in a FIFA competition at the Club World Cup in Japan last December and more than 20 countries and competitions have expressed interest to experiment with the idea.
But IFAB has yet to decide whether the crowd will be shown replays as occurs in rugby.
“We are discussing and considering at the moment, there are strong arguments for, strong arguments against,” said Elleray.
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