COLOGNE, GERMANY — Football has reached a crossroads with its video review system.
Since its introduction in 2017, VAR (Video Assistant Referee) has been a controversial subject across the sport's global reach. The free-flowing nature of football makes instant replay both disruptive in nature and difficult to implement effectively, and thus the evolution of its effects on the sport have been anything but smooth.
The Sporting News spoke to CBS Sports rules analyst Christina Unkel and traveled to Germany for a tour of the VAR studio in Cologne given by Bundesliga technology partner Sportec Solutions to take stock of the current landscape in which the video replay system in football resides.
"Fans want their cake and they want to eat it too," Unkel, who routinely appears on Champions League coverage in the United States, told The Sporting News. "Referees never asked for VAR — the fans asked for it, the players asked for it, the coaches asked for it. But everyone hates VAR right now, apparently... so, do you want it? Or do you not want it?
"Let's just start on the ground floor: do we want it, yes or no? I think we need it, even though I said the referees never created it. It's here to stay. The modern game is so quick, and the scrutiny, the number of cameras on these professional games require referees to also evolve and have that technology."
Understanding that VAR is embedded in the game for good, here are some conclusions for the spheres VAR must urgently address to remain a viable asset to the sport moving forward, and to build good will with fans around the globe as opposition grows against the current system.
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Why is VAR so difficult to implement in football?
Before we break down how to fix VAR, we have first to discuss what about video review in football is so inherently different than any other sport.
Video replay in sports such as rugby union and cricket are as smooth and accurate as possible (albeit the cricket system is aided by tracking technology to minimise error), and while there's still some slight room for error, nearly all fans at this point would agree the use of instant replay has inherently added to the sport. Other sports, such as NFL or baseball in the United States, needed a while to figure out the best use of replay, and while some bumps remain, the kinks have for the most part been ironed out.
Yet six years in and football's instant replay system is still as controversial as ever. What gives?
Two main aspects set football apart from nearly every other sport that inherently makes video review extra challenging. First, the game flows freely more than almost any other sport: there are so few stoppages in football compared to most other games that any type of major pause to review decisions are going to be disruptive to the players and visually jarring to the spectator.
Second, not a single sport on the planet features more judgement calls than football. Very few decisions that football officials make are purely black and white, and even those that are often involve elements of referees making up their own mind. To this point, the speed at which goal-line technology became widely accepted across the sport is owed largely to the yes-or-no aspect of the particular element of the game it tackles.
Thus, any improvements made to VAR must keep these two elements of football in mind.
Reestablish the meaning of "clear and obvious" error
Before any process improvements can be made, the first thing referees must do is return to the end that VAR was originally intended to advance. Video review was only meant to be implemented to solve "clear and obvious" errors within the game, yet we have strayed extremely far from this intent.
VAR has been used in situations where calls are of a true 50/50 nature, which results in frustration from fans, inconsistency in decisions, and less authority on the pitch for referees. This is the biggest issue with VAR as it stands: re-refereeing games is unnecessary, even damaging, which only serves to devalue the system and reduce faith in the process.
To fix this, there are a few possible methods of correction. One could be introducing a separate set of rules for VAR officials that has a higher threshold for making decisions than on-field referees, requiring them to define true parameters for "clear and obvious". However, this process would be a cumbersome and clunky way to correct the issue, requiring officials to know two sets of rules and still failing to address the problem of them poring over replays with a microscope.
Instead, it is this writer's recommendation that football must implement a 30-second timer to the VAR process for all judgement calls. If a decision cannot be definitively made at the expiration of this timer, play resumes and the call on the field stands. The timer would force officials to stick to a higher burden of proof, which is what "clear and obvious" truly means, thus forcing them to stick to the all-important protocol more rigidly.
"Out of the gate in Major League Soccer, when Howard Webb was training us, we were all creating protocol from the inception, because we were the first league doing it," Christian Unkel said. "It was so important — painstaking and annoying — how strict we were to protocol, because they knew once we started getting more liberal with it, it would create the scenarios that we're seeing."
As the Bundesliga technical crew informed us on the visit to their studio, this timing process already exists in an informal manner. VAR officials routinely use stopwatches to time themselves to know how long decisions took so they can be aware of their speed and disruption level throughout the match.
Yes, some calls would be missed as the timer removes an official's ability to see all the angles available to them, but it would be a vast improvement on the current system. It would reduce the disruption time of reviews, and it would, more importantly, make it much harder for an official to re-referee a match on 50/50 calls. Instead, they could only pass judgement on "clear and obvious" mistakes that are blatantly visible in the short time allowed them for review.
Embrace advancements in offside technology
The biggest burden to VAR from a disruption standpoint is, undoubtedly, the offside decision process. Watching a game and sitting through delays for officials to draw lines on a video screen is one thing; seeing it done first-hand is a whole new experience.
While visiting the Bundesliga VAR studio, The Sporting News was given a demonstration on the entire process by which officials must make offside decisions. It is an utter monstrosity. VAR officials have three different levels of granularity, which they can use to make calls depending on how tight the decision is, and the fine-tooth varieties are exceedingly cumbersome. No wonder it takes so darn long.
Technology has advanced to the point where this is no longer necessary. Semi-automated offside exists and works, as its use at the 2022 FIFA World Cup showed, and should be implemented wherever possible to take that burdensome process out of a VAR official's hands.
However, as was explained to The Sporting News in Cologne, semi-automated offside technology is exceedingly expensive to implement, as it requires the installation of over 20 cameras in every stadium in which it is meant to be used, costing tens of millions of dollars for an initial install and millions of dollars per year in upkeep. Additionally, it must use a ball imbedded with a sensor to determine the exact kick point at which the pass is delivered.
But have no fear: there is a cheaper alternative in development. While semi-automated offside technology has computerized nearly every part of the offside decision-making process, the less costly option would force video officials to manually determine the kick point, which is the quickest part of the process, as all they must do is select which frame is closest to where the ball leaves the foot. The technology then does the rest.
It's truly flabbergasting that the financial juggernaut that is the Premier League — or any other 'big five' European league, for that matter — has not yet installed these advancements. If and when they do, it will streamline one of the most frustrating aspects of VAR and remove one of the biggest eyesores for football fans around the world: officials drawing lines on a screen.
Mandate communication between leagues and tech partners
One of the most eye-opening tidbits from our visit to the Bundesliga was the idea that many different leagues around the globe contract with different technology partners for their VAR implementation.
This presents an enormous roadblock when it comes to VAR tinkering as improvements are made to provide solutions for problems encountered in the workplace. There are, inevitably, many unforeseen situations that can only be solved from experience — problems which are encountered singularly, followed by the development of adaptable solutions to prevent that situation from throwing the team off course in the future.
During the first season of VAR use in the Bundesliga, a decision was muddied because the VAR official needed to hear when the whistle had blown but did not have access to replay audio, only video. To avoid future instances of this problem, Bundesliga's VAR technology partner Sportec Solutions installed a foot pedal for officials to toggle between live audio and replay audio. Thus, access to this improvement avoided this issue in the future.
Improvements like this must be shared between technology partners for overall improvement of the VAR system worldwide, and IFAB must find a way to codify a collaboration of experiences to standardize the process by which improvements are disseminated.
It's understandable that various competitors in the VAR technology space would wish to keep proprietary information to themselves for a competitive advantage when making pitches for various league or tournament contracts. However, as the system stands, in the aforementioned situation, only Sportec Solutions would have that specific foot pedal, and all leagues using other tech companies serving other leagues might not be prepared for a similar situation to arise.
While this is ultimately a business space, and companies need room to create competitive advantages, this particular playing field must be leveled so VAR can grow collectively instead of individually. For the greater sporting good, this standardization is of the utmost importance.
Fans must treat officials better at every level
Finally, fans must do their part to improve the standard of officiating in football, which seems to be plummeting at a rapid rate.
Referee enrollment is decreasing at all levels, thinning the talent pool both at the grassroots level and the professional ranks. A large reason for this is the abuse that referees take not just at the highest levels, but in local matches as well.
Unkel says the problem runs deep within the youth level in the United States, as well as other places around the world. "It blows my mind. I'll walk into a recreational soccer complex, and there's whistles and there's fights and there's parents yelling, and I'm like 'what did I just enter into?' How is this not a hostile work environment?
"I'm gonna be very blunt: referees alone cannot fix it because they have zero voice when it comes to decision-making for financial resources and personnel resources. People don't realize that state refereeing committees at the youth level aren't funded by anybody, it's by referee registration, so if you start losing referees, you start losing your funding and can't afford to pay people to do the administration and scouting and development and training.
"If the referees aren't trained properly, they're gonna allow the safety of the players to fall, and that creates referee assault and abuse. So, attack it at the root of the problem, not at the symptom."