VAR: What It Actually Fixed, and What It Broke

The argument about video review has settled into two camps that mostly talk past each other. One says the technology corrects clear injustices. The other says it has ruined the experience of watching. Both are describing something real.

An honest assessment has to hold both.

What it genuinely fixed

The strongest case for VAR is the category of error it eliminated: the obvious mistake that everyone in the stadium could see except the one person who mattered.

The ball over the line that was not given. The clear penalty that was missed because the referee was unsighted. The offside goal that stood by a metre. The wrong player sent off. These decided matches, and occasionally seasons, and there was no mechanism to correct them.

That category is now largely gone, and it is worth remembering how genuinely maddening it used to be. A single unsighted referee made instant judgements about incidents television replayed twenty times. It was an impossible job performed under impossible conditions.

Off-the-ball violence has also declined sharply, for the simple reason that players know they are being watched from every angle. That is a real safety improvement and it rarely gets mentioned.

What it broke

The costs are equally real, and mostly concern time and certainty.

The delay. A goal celebration interrupted by ninety seconds of waiting is a diminished thing. The emotional structure of football depends on immediacy — the release when the ball crosses the line. Deferring that and then confirming it is not the same experience, and no amount of technical accuracy replaces it.

The migration of controversy. VAR did not remove arguments. It moved them. Where supporters once argued about whether the referee saw an incident, they now argue about the threshold for intervention, about what counts as clear and obvious, about which frame was used for an offside line. The arguing did not decrease; it became more technical and less satisfying.

The subjectivity problem. Factual decisions — offside, ball over the line — are genuinely improved. Subjective decisions are not, because reviewing a subjective judgement produces another subjective judgement, this time with the authority of technology attached. A soft penalty confirmed on review is still a soft penalty, but now it is harder to complain about.

Millimetre offside. Applying a rule designed to catch obvious advantage at the resolution of a shoulder blade produces outcomes that satisfy the letter of the law and nobody's sense of fairness. Various fixes have been tried and the underlying tension remains.

The unglamorous verdict

Video review has made football fairer and less enjoyable to watch live, and reasonable people weight those differently.

What would improve it is not more technology but better communication. The systems that work best are the ones where the decision process is audible or explained to the crowd, as other sports manage routinely. Football's reluctance here is cultural rather than technical, and it is the main reason the experience remains frustrating.

The technology is not going away. The question left is whether the sport is willing to make its use transparent enough that supporters feel informed rather than processed.

KickD Sports Desk

Our editorial team covers Arab football and the FIFA World Cup 2026 live on kickd.net — real-time scores, group standings, and match analysis updated around the clock.

⚡ Follow the action live

Real-time scores for every World Cup 2026 match on KickD