Football's rule-makers should encourage referees to specialise in video technology to improve the standard of officiating, the former official who pioneered VAR has told The Mail. Raymond van Meenen, the Feyenoord head of operations, also believes that the conversations between the match official and his video assistant should be broadcast to make the decision-making process transparent. Van Meenen, who developed the original VAR system while working for the Dutch football association, further proposed captains’ challenges that would permit teams to request that certain incidents should be reviewed. Van Meenen, a former referee himself, said that the job with the video screen requires a slightly different skill set to officiating matches. ‘Last season, we had three officials in the Netherlands who were not refereeing at FIFA level, but they were FIFA video match officials because they have skills to do it,’ he said. ‘I can see a time when that becomes normal. You have specialists who are good at recognising situations on camera, but not good at managing teams.’
Van Meenen spent roughly four years in the early 2010s working on the original VAR research project with Dutch football administrator Gijs de Jong and the British technology firm Hawk-Eye. It has been rolled out quickly since the first live trial in 2016, with the Premier League adopting the technology for the 2019-20 season. At the last count, domestic leagues in 49 countries are now using it. Van Meenen firmly believes it has been successful overall, and research backs him up. A study of 1,000 games by Belgian University KU Leuven found that VAR increased the accuracy of officials’ decisions from 93 per cent to 98.8 per cent. However, it has divided fans and a survey of 33,000 Premier League supporters last summer found only 26 per cent supported it. ‘If we did a survey of Dutch fans, probably half of them would say the same thing: we should get rid of the VAR immediately,’ Van Meenen says. ‘But when we have a match without the VAR, they miss it. Is it helping the referee to make more correct decisions? Yes. How long are we into this, four, five years? It’s nothing. We need to keep refining it, and then let’s see where we are in five to 10 years’ time.’
Van Meenen believes broadcasting a referee’s conversation with their video assistant — as has worked successfully in rugby union — would make fans more prepared to accept the system. ‘You need total transparency,’ he says. ‘Just turn on the microphones and let them have that conversation for everybody to follow.’ Van Meenen and his colleagues considered the captains’ reviews idea for their original protocol but decided against implementing it at such an early stage. He would now like to see it trialled in a format similar to cricket’s TMO. Van Meenen added: ‘I can’t imagine a match without a VAR now. It’s not 100 per cent in the Dutch league right now, or in the Premier League and Champions League, but it will evolve.’
Source: Daily Mail
