World Cup Video Assistant Referee System In Place

The 2018 World Cup will be the first edition of soccer’s biggest event to feature the new Video Assistant Referee (VAR) system. With the World Cup Video Assistant Referee system in place, of course, many critics are predicting bad things, and they are fairly vocal about all the presumed failures and faults of the platform. That said, the VAR has been through numerous trials in major competitions since 2016, and the International Football Association Board has officially added the protocol to their Laws of the Game.

Essentially, VAR is no different than other sports’ instant replay rules, whereby officials can verify or overturn various important or potentially game-changing calls when and if given plays are challenged (which can only be initiated by the referee crew in this case). Currently, there are only four types of plays or calls that can be reviewed via VAR. These are goals, penalty decisions, red card decisions (but not second yellow cards, for some reason), and mistaken identity re card penalties.

One prominent critic of the World Cup Video Assistant Referee rollout is disgraced former FIFA head Sepp Blatter, who says that its use at the highest level of the game will be compromised by the fact that many World Cup refs have not worked with the system before and that – more generally – the VAR itself is “not very clever.” Blatter believes that the VAR is “an innovation which is going too fast.” Apparently, official replays in professional sports are a brand new, untested phenomenon. The NFL and NHL have only been using them for 30 or so years now, while the NBA and MLB have had their systems in place for a mere decade or two. The technology simply hasn’t been proven!

It’s also worth pointing out that Blatter’s complaints about VAR are predicated on his alleged football “purism.” Whether or not a guy banned from FIFA for 6 years on corruption charges has much merit when it comes to “the integrity of the game” is another matter, but needless to say, if Blatter’s against it, it’s probably not a bad thing. After all, match fixing is harder when you’ve got replay accountability.

(Former soccer superstar and Real Madrid manager Zinedine Zidane is also against the VAR system, but that’s probably just because it would have ruined his epic career of highlight-reel-worthy flops and fouls.)

And it’s that latter point re match fixing that BettingOddsWorldCup.com thinks makes the Video Assistant Referee system so compelling. Sure, it will lead to the correct calls being made a bit more often, but VAR effectively cuts out a large amount of potential corruption on the gambling side of the sport. (The World Cup is the biggest sports betting event in the world, remember.) With more scrutiny comes less wiggle room and fewer avenues for manipulation, and that should help improve the fairness and professionalism of the referees charged with supervising the most popular sport on the globe’s grandest stage.