Referees will make live announcements to explain VAR decisions at this summer’s Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.
Officials have been asked to provide brief descriptions of the reasoning behind VAR decisions over the PA system once the final verdict has been given.
At the 2019 World Cup, a string of high-profile contentious calls attracted huge criticism, and speaking at Stadium Australia on Tuesday, chairman of Fifa’s referees committee, Pierluigi Collina, said he hoped the move would bring about “more transparency” in the game.
“Nevertheless we won’t be perfect, we didn’t want to put extra pressure on them,” Collina added, pointing out the announcements will be delivered in English and many referees are not native speakers.
“We told them be natural, say what comes across natural, don’t be stressed that ‘now I’ve got to follow a script’.
“If you follow American football, NFL, [they have been making] announcement of referees’ decisions since 50 years and today, very experienced referees make funny announcements with mistakes, because speaking in a microphone, 60,000, 70,000 people listening to your voice in the PA is not easy. But we are confident it will work well.”
As always, VAR will only be used for the following four types of incidents:
- goals and the violations that precede them
- red cards
- penalties
- mistaken identity when awarding a card
The announcements process will only be used for on-field reviews: those VAR decisions which involve the referee consulting the pitchside monitor. They are for subjective calls only such as penalties and handballs, whereas objective calls – like offside decisions – can be made independently by the VAR without consulting with the referee.
Kari Seitz, who officiated at four Women’s World Cups as a referee and who now works as Fifa’s head of refereeing for women’s football, said: “We’ve asked them to communicate these four items – first, what is the final decision, [such as] penalty kick, free kick, offside. The reason, what was the exact offence committed, tripping, kicking, who committed the offence, and if they can add a description.
“But we also have to know this is the first time they’ve all done it. The most important thing for us is the decision on the field, if we get all that information inside the announcement, great. That’s a help, because it’s really just for people to understand the call.
“At the end of the day our first priority is to make sure that they make the correct decision and if we can explain these four items that’s the extra part that’s going to be a benefit for the game. Right now I feel we’ll be able to get 80 to 90 per cent of this and we’ll work throughout the course of the competition to ensure we’re doing this the best way possible.”
The move follows two successful experiments with the system at the Club World Cup in Morocco and at the men’s U20 World Cup in Argentina.
Fifa is hopeful that referees now have sufficient experience in using VAR despite the majority of women’s leagues around the world not having the technology at their disposal.
To help with offside decisions, semi-automated offside technology (SAOT) – often called “robot offsides” will be used to pinpoint the exact location of different points on the body. Every World Cup stadium has 12 cameras to monitor players and the ball, with 29 data points on each individual player.
The ball is pictured 50 times per second, with integrated sensors revealing the exact point at which the ball has been kicked.
Just like at the men’s World Cup in Qatar, where the average added time per game was 11 minutes, Fifa has also instructed this summer’s referees to be particularly stringent on monitoring time wasted through goal celebrations, injuries, substitutions and other incidents.
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