VAR needs a higher bar, but football still has to agree where it is

VAR was meant to correct the mistake everyone could see. Its current problem is that football cannot always agree on which mistake belongs in that category.

European refereeing officials have responded with a simple instruction: use video assistance only when the on-field decision is blatantly wrong or when the referee has missed a clear incident. It sounds like a return to first principles, because it is. The difficult part begins immediately afterwards. “Clear and obvious” is a standard of judgement, not a stopwatch, and judgement is where football keeps finding room for disagreement.

Chief refereeing officers from all 55 European national associations met with Uefa refereeing officials and an International Football Association Board representative last week to discuss recent changes to the laws. Their conclusion was that VAR needs to return to its original aims. That is a significant statement of intent: the technology is being asked to support the referee rather than quietly replace the referee’s decision with a longer television exercise.

The screen is not supposed to become a second referee

When Ifab added VAR to the laws in 2018, its stated philosophy was “minimum interference - maximum benefit”. The purpose was to reduce unfairness caused by clear and obvious errors or serious missed incidents involving goals, penalties, direct red cards and mistaken identity.

That wording contains a limit as well as a promise. VAR is not there to identify every arguable contact, re-measure every tight decision until a preferred answer emerges, or provide a second opinion whenever the first one attracts complaints. Uefa said the referee must remain at the centre of decision-making. The video official is an essential support, not a remote replacement.

The distinction matters because a review can be technically thorough without being faithful to the threshold that justifies it. A long search for a decisive angle may establish that a decision is debatable. It does not automatically establish that the original call was plainly wrong.

Uefa’s officials explicitly linked “lengthy, microscoping reviews” to that danger. Their point is not that difficult incidents cease to exist when the game resumes quickly. It is that prolonged examination can itself reveal the absence of the required certainty. If the footage needs sustained interpretation, the case for overturning the referee may already be weaker than the process suggests.

A sensible principle meets an unsolvable word

“Clear and obvious” has the virtue of being easy to repeat and the flaw of being hard to settle. One manager can see a glaring injustice; the manager in the other dugout can see a fair decision. Neither view has to be dishonest. They can simply be looking at the same incident through competing interests and different ideas of what the referee should have seen.

That subjectivity is why an instruction to shorten reviews should not be confused with an instruction that will end arguments. The BBC’s analysis notes the obvious problem: the phrase has no universally agreed border. Football has not discovered a machine that can turn disputed contact, handball interpretation or offside into a shared emotional experience.

There is also a practical complication in the calls that arrive in sequence. A possible offside may precede a potential handball, which may precede a foul. If the earlier incident could rule out the later one, officials have to consider it. A time limit might make a review feel cleaner from the stand, yet it cannot make the order of those incidents irrelevant.

This is the tension in Uefa’s message. It asks for less microscope work, while football still presents incidents where several questions have to be addressed before the final question can be answered. The better target is not speed for its own sake. It is discipline: a review should take the time required by a genuinely clear error, and no more authority than the protocol gives it.

Human error and protocol are not the same failure

The 2023 disallowed Liverpool goal involving Luis Diaz remains useful in this discussion for one narrow reason. The BBC analysis describes it as an offside decision VAR should have overturned, with the failure attributed to human error rather than the protocol.

That difference is important. Restricting intervention to clear and obvious errors does not mean accepting an obvious error once it has occurred. In the Diaz example, the supposed restraint of the system was not the issue. The system had a case that met its own threshold and failed to correct it.

Uefa’s position therefore should not be read as an invitation for video officials to stay silent when a decision is plainly wrong. It is an attempt to keep two separate problems separate. One is failure to intervene where the evidence demands it. The other is intervention where the evidence only sustains an argument. Both damage confidence, though they demand different remedies.

The first calls for accurate communication and correct application. The second calls for restraint. Treating them as one complaint leads to a familiar but unhelpful conclusion: that VAR is either too involved or not involved enough. It can be both, depending on the incident.

The new mistaken-identity clarification has a narrower purpose

The meeting also acknowledged Ifab’s recent clarification of the mistaken-identity rule introduced before this summer’s World Cup. The rule allows a decision to be changed if a player is booked or sent off even though the foul was committed by the opposition team.

Switzerland’s Breel Embolo became the first player sent off under the new law after a controversial second yellow card for simulation against Argentina. Leandro Parades had originally received a yellow card for his challenge before VAR intervened.

Ifab’s clarification is deliberately narrow. VAR may review cautions to identify the player who committed the offence that was penalised; it may not use that route to review or alter the offence itself. That separation is easy to overlook, yet it protects the broader structure of VAR protocol. Correcting identity is one task. Reopening the referee’s judgement on a yellow-card offence is another.

It also illustrates why language around video review needs precision. The new law does not create a general invitation to revisit cautions. It deals with the specific problem of the wrong team or player being punished for the foul. The scope is limited because the scope has to be limited.

Reducing delays has more than one route

There was unanimous support among the officials for recent rule changes intended to reduce unnecessary delays. Those changes include time limits on goal-kicks, throw-ins and substitutions, along with new regulations concerning on-field injuries and goalkeeper tactical timeouts.

That wider agenda gives the VAR discussion some context. A match does not feel interrupted only when a referee walks to the monitor. Time can drain through restarts, substitutions, injuries and goalkeeper stoppages. The officials are considering a collection of delays rather than pretending that one screen explains every lost minute.

Still, VAR is the most conspicuous interruption because it carries a second consequence: it can change the score, a penalty decision, a sending-off decision or the identified player. Players and supporters can tolerate a pause more readily when they understand its purpose. A review that appears to search for a marginal reason to overturn the referee tests that patience quickly.

Uefa’s proposed return to the original philosophy is therefore more than a plea for brisker television. It is an attempt to restore a hierarchy. The referee makes the decision. VAR intervenes when the evidence reaches a high threshold. If it does not, disagreement remains part of the match rather than becoming a reason to relitigate it through a monitor.

The argument will survive the instruction

The strongest part of the officials’ message is also the least dramatic: VAR should not re-referee the game. That gives referees a clearer centre of gravity and gives video officials a more defensible reason to stay out of marginal calls.

Its limitation is equally plain. No statement can make a subjective phrase objective. A short review may still produce a disputed decision; a long review may still be necessary when several earlier incidents affect the final call. The protocol can narrow intervention, not eliminate interpretation.

Football may gain from accepting that distinction. The question after a review should not always be whether every viewer agrees with the decision. It should be whether the original decision met the standard for video intervention. That is a less satisfying answer for anyone convinced their side has been wronged. It is also closer to the principle Uefa has chosen to defend.

Research: This article uses the archived evidence supplied for this story. Story inspiration: BBC Sport's original report.