World Cup 2018: Studying how VAR has had an impact on the tournament

Issues surrounding VAR

The main issues surrounding the controversies of VAR usage are:

- Different interpretations on what defines a “clear mistake”. On many occasions, many football pundits and fans feel that some of the incidents not acknowledged by the referee falls under the category of "clear mistake". But then it is expected that the central team monitoring VAR will ask the referee to review those incidents and take the final decision through VAR. However, in reality, these are not happening. The alternate approach is to have the individual teams decide on when to call VAR or not based on certain quota system

- Inconsistencies on when VAR should be invoked or referred to by the match officials. While the scope of VAR is decided by VAR, there are some grey area in some of the definitions, specially surrounding a red card decision or on a "clear mistake". Many feel that VAR should be invoked surrounding a rough tackle, even if that happens in the middle of the field. Because the impact of a potential red card will be huge when it comes to the outcome of the match.

- Failure to provide direction and clarification to everyone on when VAR is being called and for what purpose VAR is being referred to. While giant screens are displaying when VAR is called upon, the issue with the television spectators is that they often do not know whether VAR has been called upon or not.

- Inconsistency of VAR induced punishments to so-called “big” players vs other players for similar incidents. There has been allegations that VAR has influenced in showing red cards to players committing rough tackles, however deliberate elbowing from "big" stars like Ronaldo, Marcelo are not getting the same treatment. At maximum, they are being shown a yellow card for these red card equivalent fouls.