The International Football Association Board are set to trial in-stadium VAR announcements in other competitions, after an initial trial at the Women’s World Cup.
The PA news agency (via BBC) report that after VAR decisions were announced in-stadium at the Women’s World Cup, IFAB are set to trial the process in other competitions.
IFAB are also set to discuss other changes, such as making audio between the referee and VAR available in the stadium, but that change is reportedly less popular.
Those on the marketing and commercial side love the idea of making the audio available to fans, whilst those involved in officiating matches would probably feel extra pressure if such audio could be heard by all the supporters in the ground.
As it stands, the rules of the game specifically prohibit the conversations between the referee and the VAR from being broadcast live to fans.
IFAB are also reportedly looking at allowing a decision to be revisited where a clear mistake was made and no significant action has been taken since the restart of play.
That would allow the VAR team to pull the game back for incidents like Luis Diaz’s disallowed goal against Tottenham Hotspur, where the VAR quickly realised they’d made a mistake but knew it was too late to change the decision after play restarted.
Lastly, IFAB has been asked to discuss widening the scope of VAR to decisions such as corner or free-kicks. As it stands, neither such decision can be overturned.
Once again, this isn’t necessarily going to be a popular change. It’s likely many would view widening VAR’s scope as slowing down the game.
Yet you can see how the award of corners and free-kicks could have a material impact on the result of a contest.
If a player scores a header from a corner that was incorrectly awarded, or if a player scores directly from a free-kick that shouldn’t have been given, the VAR team can’t currently do anything about it.
It will be interesting to see how IFAB rules on these four potential changes, but it looks like we’re most likely to get the in-stadium announcements of confirmed decisions first.