The South American confederation has launched a proposal to address all the playing time that is lost due to lengthy VAR checks. “We recently sent a document to world football’s governing body FIFA and IFAB, the body that determines the rules of the game, asking for the time to be stopped so the minutes ticking by are not a worry during VAR reviews", Wilson Seneme, chairman of the CONMEBOL Referees Committee, told AFP. “We also want to be proactive in that every team has a number of opportunities to ask for their own reviews, as happens in other sports such as volleyball and tennis,” said Seneme. All major European leagues now use VAR technology, but in South America the video technology is not yet widely applied with Brazil, Paraguay and Colombia the only three countries using it. VAR was first introduced in 2016 and featured at the World Cup in 2018. “When more countries use this tool in their leagues, football will become more modern and we’ll all adapt more to the use of VAR in decision making”, added Seneme.
One of the sharpest criticisms from players, coaches, specialists and fans is the delay in resuming the game. “The VAR situations are very different in each game”, said Argentine Rodolfo Otero, a member of the Referees Committee. “There are actions that for protocol reasons are going to take a long time because you have to find the exact point of contact”, warned the expert. “There are certain plays that take time, but in general the referees made very good decisions and the time delayed was not too long,” added the specialist, who agreed that, as the referees become familiar with the operation of the system, they will save more time. Likewise, the Chilean Carlos Astroza, technical manager of CONMEBOL Refereeing, remarked that the purpose “is to seek sports justice, ready to make important decisions where the human eyes cannot see. You want to make the right decisions. What VAR is looking for after all is to adapt to a modern sport where questions are decided by seconds or centimeters”.
Source: TheN24