Proposal: A VAR decisions section on every fifa.com match page
Tell me why it is a good idea and why it is a bad idea - I am curious to have feedback.
FIFA should add a dedicated VAR decisions section to every match page on fifa.com.
One section per fixture. Published after the final whistle. Every critical decision explained in plain language, including incidents the video team checked but did not recommend for review. Written by the refereeing department, signed, permanent, searchable. The result is already settled, so the explanation cannot change it. It can only make people understand what they watched.
England 0-0 Ghana in Foxborough is the case for it. Ezri Konsa went through Prince Kwabena Adu in the box in the 79th minute, the referee waved away Ghana’s appeals, and no on-field review followed. Carlos Queiroz said VAR had gone for a coffee. The loudest moment of the match got the least explanation, because FIFA’s visible transparency mostly speaks when the process becomes formal. That is the hole this section fills.
Here is how the protocol works. VAR can assist the referee only for a clear and obvious error or a serious missed incident, and only in a set of match-changing categories: a goal, a penalty, a direct red card and mistaken identity. This World Cup widened that set, adding a clearly wrong second yellow card and a corner kick awarded in clear error. The video team checks every one of those situations automatically. When the check finds no clear and obvious error, there is usually no message to the referee at all. This has a name in the protocol, the silent check, and the call may well be correct. The public never hears the reasoning, and that silence is the gap.
Two admissions before anyone makes them for me. I am not a referee and I cannot tell you whether the Konsa challenge was a penalty. It looked debatable from my sofa. I have no decisive opinion on it either way, because I do not know every rule in play. I will happily assume the officials had a rationale I could not see, and I want to see it.
And yes, this sounds naive. A section on a website will not settle the oldest argument in the game, and I know that. Resistance to naive ideas is often a reflex, a tidy way to defend the way things already work. I have spent close to forty years inside this part of football, across broadcast, data and streaming, so the proposal comes from somewhere even if I turn out to be wrong about it. Tell me which part is wrong. That is a better conversation than the silence we have now.
What every match page must contain (for each case)
The incident and the minute it happened
The law or laws in question
The on-field decision
Whether the video team checked it, whether a review was recommended, and the reason
The threshold applied for a clear and obvious error
Relevant images as possible by existing media rights
Posted within hours, same template every match, in the tournament languages
Ten things to consider
1. The non-call is the whole point. The stadium announcement, the screen graphic and the referee’s microphone are built around the visible VAR processes. The silent check produces none of them. The Konsa challenge produced no review and no announcement, so it produced no explanation. The page has to carry the decision that was checked and left alone, with the threshold the booth applied and the reason it stayed out.
2. One official home, on the record. The explanation belongs under the fixture on fifa.com, signed by the refereeing department. A coach, a federation, a reporter and a fan all read the same record in the same place. No leaks, no selective briefings, no guessing.
3. Plain language, fixed template. Every entry reads the same way. Incident and minute. The law in question. The on-field call. Whether the video team checked it, whether a review was recommended, and why. A reader with no referee badge understands it in thirty seconds.
4. Name the threshold out loud. Most of the anger comes from a clear and obvious error being an invisible standard. Spell it out per incident. Say what would have crossed the line and why this did not. The black box gets a window.
5. The pieces already exist. The Premier League runs Match Officials: Mic’d Up and clarified more than 325 incidents in one season through its Match Centre account. English grounds now hear PA announcements on VAR reviews, the factual offside calls aside. IFAB’s own protocol lets competitions have the referee publicly explain decisions after a review or a lengthy check, and domestic football has shown how post-match audio can be used. Nobody has assembled it on the sport’s own front page, match by match.
6. It defends the officials. A reasoned, public account shows the work behind a call. The vacuum is what feeds the pile-on. Across 104 matches the record builds a body of evidence the referees can stand on.
7. The argument is permanent, so feed it properly. Football debates referees the way it breathes. That argument runs on clips with no context right now. The page gives it accurate material to work with. Better material makes for a better argument and a shorter one.
8. Operational load is real and manageable. 104 matches, many languages, published within hours. FIFA has appointed 30 video match officials for the tournament, alongside the wider refereeing operation. The Premier League has already shown that hundreds of public clarifications can be handled across a season. The constraint here is will. The capacity already exists.
9. One standard across six confederations. Different refereeing cultures produce different expectations around thresholds and interpretation, and a World Cup throws all of them into the same tournament. A single written template, the same law references every time, narrows the gap. Consistency on the page pushes consistency on the pitch.
10. Boring, fast, mobile, multilingual. The design should disappear. Same layout every match, posted the morning after at the latest, readable on a phone, available in the tournament languages. Fans open it with the result settled and the heat already lower.
The position
My father shot football for La Stampa. A photograph freezes the exact moment a crowd argues about a decision and hands it back with the detail the eye missed. A VAR page is that still, with the reasoning attached. FIFA has spent this World Cup moving in that direction, with mics on referees, decisions on screens and clearer VAR processes.
I have spent my career since 1994 building sport websites, including that one, so my idea had to end up on a web page even today :).
The last step is a dedicated VAR decisions section on every fifa.com match page.
Build it.
FIFA.com match page:
https://www.fifa.com/en/match-centre/match/17/285023/289273/400021506
Just been told that UEFA started doing something in the same spirit for Champions League and are working on improvements for the new season:
https://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsleague/news/029d-1ebd52c0e86d-cc44b76e6bc1-1000--uefa-champions-league-var-technical-explanations/
Sources
World Cup 2026 VAR review: Why England were lucky not to concede penalty vs. Ghana (ESPN): https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/49027532/world-cup-2026-var-review-red-card-penalty-handball-goal-line-technology
Ghana robbed of penalty in England draw, VAR ‘went for a coffee’, jokes coach (South China Morning Post): https://www.scmp.com/sport/football/article/3358149/ghana-robbed-penalty-england-draw-var-went-coffee-jokes-coach
‘The VAR went for coffee’ - Queiroz puzzled as Ghana denied penalty in England draw (beIN SPORTS): https://www.beinsports.com/en-us/soccer/fifa-world-cup-2026/articles/the-var-went-for-coffee--queiroz-puzzled-as-ghana-denied-penalty-in-england-draw-2026-06-24
Video Assistant Referee (VAR) protocol (IFAB): https://www.theifab.com/laws/latest/video-assistant-referee-var-protocol/
Ultimate World Cup Rules Guide: Tiebreakers, VAR, Cooling Breaks and More (FOX Sports): https://www.foxsports.com/stories/soccer/world-cup-rules-var-water-break-penalty-tiebreaker
Final List of Match Officials, FIFA World Cup 2026 (FIFA): https://digitalhub.fifa.com/asset/7879a8c6-c228-4848-a8de-7dc69b37b594/Final-List-of-Match-Officials-FWC-2026.pdf
What’s new in 2025/26: IFAB Laws and Premier League Football Principles (Premier League): https://www.premierleague.com/en/news/4373884/whats-new-in-2025-26-season-ifab-laws-and-premier-league-football-principles
Premier League to release VAR audio on TV for the first time (ESPN): https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/37638661/premier-league-release-var-audio-tv-first