Sometimes the world of football really wonders me. We’ve all seen the World Cup this year and the effect VAR had on this tournament. I’ve seen some faults by the referees turned around in the right decision, leading to more fair results. At the same time it takes away a lot of misbehaviour by the players involved. The VAR takes away the reason to protest against decisions. The more reason that it’s shocking big leagues like the Champions League and Premier League still haven’t introduced VAR.

VAR in the Champions League

The UEFA decided to block the introduction of VAR for this season, because they believed they didn’t had the capacity to introduce it already. At first they talked about introducing it from the start of the knock-out stages. Now they finally made a decision and this is to start with VAR in the Champions League from the beginning of the 2019-2020 season. This means the biggest club tournament in the world finally get’s more fair. I’ve already seen so many moments in the first round of the group stage where a VAR could have made the decision better. The moment that stands out for me is the red card Cristiano Ronaldo received. I’m convinced this was turned around when there was a video assistant referee in place. The fact that he only receives a one match ban supports my opinion.

Premier League

The biggest domestic league in the world will start an experiment with the video ref during the course of this season. The FA decided to select 15 matches that will get the help of VAR. It’s good that they finally start  introducing it, but I don’t know if this is really fair. Some teams will get the benefit of the video ref, where others still need to hope that the ref does his job in a good way. Nevertheless it’s good that we’re getting closer of having a video assistant referee in every big league in Europe. There will always be people against changes, the same was when they introduced goal line technology. But now we can’t live without it anymore.