World Cup disaster in waiting? VARs could ruin FIFA's 2018 tournament
The Confederations Cup is a warm-up ahead of the World Cup in 2018 and the video assistance referee (VAR) system is going through its testing stages here in Russia with FIFA president Gianni Infantino said to be insistent about its usage in the main tournament next year.
If any message is to be fed back to Infantino it’s that much more work needs to be done to have everyone prepared for the widespread implementation of the VAR system at the top level.
If we don’t see an improvement in the calls that are currently being made then bringing it in would do more to spoil the World Cup than any other decision.
What occurred in the game between Cameroon and Chile could only be described as chaos. It gets to the root of the current issue around VARs: on-field referee’s doubting their own decision making capabilities. This would appear to go against IFAB’s philosophy regarding VARs of “minimum interference, maximum benefit”.
Comments