UEFA president criticises VAR use, says football needs uncertainty

Reuters Videos
Updated

SHOWS: NYON, SWITZERLAND (DECEMBER 4, 2019) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL)

1. (SOUNDBITE) (English) UNION OF EUROPEAN FOOTBALL ASSOCIATIONS (UEFA) PRESIDENT, ALEKSANDER CEFERIN, SAYING:

"I still think that football needs uncertainty, because the result is uncertain, the players do mistakes and the referees on the pitch have to take responsibility and not some people hidden somewhere in a van or in a building 500 kilometres from the venue. The referee should decide."

2. (SOUNDBITE) (English) UNION OF EUROPEAN FOOTBALL ASSOCIATIONS (UEFA) PRESIDENT, ALEKSANDER CEFERIN, SAYING:

"Those are things that are not clear, because before the referee never said, 'seven minutes before, there was a foul, so, we go back'. Now, change - the game is changing and that is what we are afraid of, that it's changing too much."

3. (SOUNDBITE) (English) UNION OF EUROPEAN FOOTBALL ASSOCIATIONS (UEFA) PRESIDENT, ALEKSANDER CEFERIN, SAYING:

"I can live with uncertainty and I can live with the fact that the referees are human beings who make mistakes. But now, when technology makes a mistake, that is a bigger problem. Because it is not clear. And we still do not know which handball is a handball. We do not know who is drawing, how exactly, the lines. How thick the lines are? So, is it the meaning of offsides that if you are in offsides position of one centimetre, is that enough? Does it change the game? There are many questions, had, and I would prefer football to stay as close as possible as it has been for hundreds

STORY: Football needs uncertainty, the head of European soccer body UEFA said on Wednesday (December 4), as he criticised the way VAR technology has been used and said it needed to become less invasive.

Aleksander Ceferin told reporters that UEFA would propose that soccer's rulemaking IFAB makes changes to the way that the VAR system, officially introduced in 2018, was being implemented.

The use of VAR, where match officials use video replays to check decisions by the referee on the pitch and alert him to possible mistakes, has been surrounded by controversy over the last few months.

Some fans say the system goes far beyond its original remit and that decisions are taking too long.

One of the biggest sources of controversy has involved offside decisions where VAR officials use gridlines superimposed on the screen which has led to goals being disallowed because a player's toe or armpit was offside.

Handball was also a source of confusion -- so much so that, when some of Europe's top coaches visited UEFA for a seminar last month and were asked to judge an incident, Ceferin sad half said it was handball and half did not.

He said another issue was how far back VAR officials should check for infringements which Ceferin said he had even confused UEFA's head of refereeing Roberto Rosetti.