April 9 – FIFA has stepped up preparations for the inaugural 32-team Club World Cup this summer by holding a series of referee seminars around the world, as the governing body seeks to ensure officiating standards match the scale and profile of its newest tournament.
November 22 – New FIFA guidelines resulted in more than an hour of stoppage time in the first four World Cup games in bid to maximise playing time and avoid time-wasting.
July 1 – FIFA have confirmed that semi-automated offside technology will be used at the Qatar World Cup, providing alerts to video match officials using 12 dedicated tracking cameras inside the stadiums along with a sensor in the match ball.
February 10 – Pierluigi Collina, chairman of FIFA’s Referee Committee and FIFA’s Technology and Innovation, has emphasised that the referees and assistants on the field will still have the final decision, despite the advanced trials of the semi-automated offside technology system (SAOT).
July 10 – With controversy still raging over the interpretation of VAR, even with matches played behind closed doors, FIFA is taking over the responsibility for the system from the game’s lawmakers.
June 26 – Refereeing at the Women’s World Cup has been under severe scrutiny with VAR and other interventions wrecking the natural rhythm of the game, but FIFA’s head of referees Pierluigi Collina has shrugged off the storm of criticism, saying that the tournament is not “an experiment” for new rules using the VAR.
August 2 – Pierluigi Collina, appointed UEFA’s first ever chief refereeing officer following his retirement as one of the world’s top officials in 2005, has relinquished the post and been placed by Roberto Rosetti.
By Andrew Warshaw
July 2 – The controversies continue to rage but FIFA’s refereeing chief Pierluigi Collina and his colleagues insist the introduction of video assistant referees (Vars) has been an unqualified success in Russia.
February 13 – In a rare intervention, UEFA have stepped in to order referees to provide greater protection to Europe’s top players during the knockout stages of the Champions League.
By Andrew Warshaw
July 3 – The future of football or an expensive counter-productive exercise? The jury seems very much to still be out when it comes to video technology following the conclusion of the Confederations Cup.
April 20 – UEFA have confirmed that the Hawk-Eye system will be used to decide whether or not the ball has crossed the line at this year’s European Championships. The camera-based system will be installed in all 10 stadia before the tournament kicks off on June 10 at the Stade de France.