Should we set time limits on VAR checks?
It’s a common claim: a decision cannot be clearly wrong if it takes the video assistant referee more than, say, 30 seconds to check
Delays to the game caused by VAR are probably the biggest single complaint about the system, which was introduced in the Premier League in 2019.
Fans in the stadium hate the jeopardy of celebrating a goal while wondering whether the VAR will spot an attacker’s kneecap had breached the offside line in the build-up, or the ball had brushed the sleeve of a striker just before he scored.
It’s no fun when a goal is chalked off in such circumstances, and it’s not much better when the on-field decision is supported but only after an eternity of standing around awaiting the outcome.
The lack of information in the stadium only makes matters worse, as the only clues provided to players, coaches and supporters are graphics displayed giving a few scant details about what the VAR is scrutinising.
After the event, those same screens display an explanation that sometimes is a garbled word salad that leaves fans none the wiser.
Despite such disquiet, the facts suggest that VAR checks are much less intrusive than the public discourse would suggest. Indeed, the majority of matches pass off without any delays at all, which of course goes unnoticed.
Official data collated by the Premier League show that the average delay to a game caused by VAR in the 2023/24 season was 64 seconds, which amounts to 1 per cent of the 101 minutes that matches took to complete.
In 2024/25, the average delay to games dropped to just 39 seconds. This can be attributed to a greater emphasis on VAR training, incremental gains that shaved a few seconds off checks, and the introduction of semi-automated offside technology in the final few months of the season.
Nonetheless, 39 seconds is still time we would all rather spend watching football than staring at a pretty purple graphic and hoping for the best, and some checks still take what feels like an eternity.
There are a few reasons that some checks will take longer than 30 seconds, with some requiring so much scrutiny that a few minutes might be necessary.
For starters, there are up to 40 cameras on a Premier League game. The VAR and the replay operator, who is employed by Hawk-Eye, do not know which angle will be conclusive. Sometimes it will take a while to find conclusive evidence.
Then there are the laws of the game, and the clubs’ expectations of how they should be implemented. In Major League Soccer, technology is not used to judge offside; instead, the VAR applies the same ‘clear and obvious’ threshold they use for other decisions.
In the Premier League, clubs insisted on precise measurements in the interests of consistency, then gave the VARs limited technology that involved drawing lines manually on a screen.
The club owners were prepared to pay the price of the inevitable delays in return for more accurate outcomes, but it was the VARs that copped the blame.
Changing the offside law to give attackers an advantage would speed up the VAR process if clubs were prepared for some inconsistencies, which seems unlikely.
The solution will therefore come with even better technology, which will involve assistant referees being told instantly whenever a player is in an offside position. That will have the added benefit of removing the need to delay the flag in tight situations.
Another law that causes some lengthy VAR delays is handball. As it stands, a goal cannot be allowed if the ball hits the arm of a player while in the act of scoring or immediately beforehand.
That means the VAR has to check for possible infractions every time a goal is scored. While many are obvious – the ball never leaves the ground – many are not and the angles are inconclusive.
The VAR cannot take the chance that, based on the first few replays, any error is not ‘clear and obvious’, because the risk is too high that the broadcaster later finds an angle that proves conclusively the goal was illegal.
A return to the law that allows an accidental handball by the scorer would speed up the VAR process and shave even more off those 39 seconds.
Any time limit would present another problem, as sometimes there are multiple potential offences in the build-up to a goal.
A famous example involved a match between Newcastle United and Arsenal in November 2023. The VAR had to check whether the ball had gone out of play, there was a foul on Gabriel Magalhães by Joelinton, and/or an offside offence by Anthony Gordon.
Say, for sake of argument, the check was time-limited at one minute, the VAR would have started checking the potential foul but not been able to review it properly. A two-minute limit would have cut short the offside check, which even today may have involved a manual process because there was doubt when the ball was played.
Decisions around whether to keep VAR rest with the Premier League clubs, not the referees. For now, club owners accept delays to the game in return for higher accuracy.
Assuming VAR is retained, there could never be time limits on checks. For the foreseeable future, we shall always be dependent on the technology and the experts who sit in the VAR chair every week to reach the best possible decisions in the shortest possible time.
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VAR: Correct decision to award Newcastle United goal against Arsenal, panel rules | BBC Sport | 9 November 2023
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