By Andrew Warshaw
March 19 – Despite reservations far and wide, as anticipated FIFA’s ruling Council has rubber-stamped the decision earlier this month by football’s lawmakers to approve video assistant referees for the World Cup and beyond.
The final step towards granting match officials extra help was agreed last Friday in Bogota – a follow-up to the ruling by the International FA Board – and was trumpeted as significant progress by Gianni Infantino, the man who has driven the move from day one.
“It has been approved and we are extremely happy with that decision,” said Infantino despite ongoing concerns over the time taken to make decisions and lack of information for spectators in the stadium. “It’s an essential decision, very important and historical decision.”
Only when a “clear and obvious” error in officiating is spotted is VAR supposed to come into play. But that has caused considerable confusion in countries where the system has been trialled even though there is clear evidence that most game-changing incidents decided by VAR have proved correct.
Infantino made exactly this point saying VARs would help football become “a fairer and more transparent sport”.
“It’s not possible that, in 2018, everyone in the stadium and their living room knows if a referee has made a big mistake or not, and the only one who doesn’t know is the referee,” he added.
FIFA are to give match officials special training before Russia on how to use video reviews and Infantino said no one on the FIFA Council was against the idea. “We didn’t take it lightly. We studied it thoroughly for two years.
“I was sceptical at the beginning but without trying things you can’t know what they are worth. That’s why we carried out trials in 1,000 matches. There are facts: referees make one important mistake one in every three, with VAR it is every 19. These are facts and figures.
“The success rate of referees today without VAR is 93%, which is already excellent. With VAR they reach 99%.”
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