The VAR technology at the 2018 FIFA World Cup : Let the cameras decide.

The FIFA world cup is far the biggest football competition in the world, with thirty-two very eager and ambitious countries in contest for the coveted World Cup trophy and many more in stake in the very interesting competition. The 2018 FIFA World Cup competition which is ongoing at the cold cities of Russia has so far being one of the most interesting world cup in history with every team putting in their best and coming up with stunning results.

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Saudi Arabia starting off with a humiliating 5 goals margin defeat at the hands of the host country and the defending champions Germany losing to power-packed central American country Mexico has been one of the major mouth-gaping results, current world best player Cristiano Ronaldo putting up an astonishing performance to pair up his national team with the star-studded Spain team has also been one of the biggest individual performance in the competition.

Many more happenings has surrounded this competition and of course I am not the only one watching, however, if you’re a soccer fan and you’re not currently in Russia or if you’re in Russia and couldn’t make it to the stadium you’d probably be watching the matches from your television screen or streaming it with your phone, if I am correct with this guess, then eventually you must be familiar with the VAR room as a glimpse of this room is shown before the start of every game. But what is the essence of this room or better said, ‘of what function is this room to the competition?’

Technology and the contemporary world

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Technology has grown over the years, our current technological products and procedures has changed so much and today, many gadget are completely different from their parent gadget, with the basis and principles of function being the only thing they share in common. Suddenly we’ve moved from the very large, slow and excess power consuming technological gadgets to the much miniaturized computers and gadgets which unarguably performs very much more than their earlier produced form with much increased speed and accuracy making a perfect fit between this gadgets and their users.

The growth of human intellectual abilities which has made possible, the much technological advancements today have also increased the application of technology in almost all aspect of human existence, most activities performed in our contemporary world has a technological side to it, which is centered on not only creating precise results but also making these results come faster, this is evidenced in our educational , transportation, communication, and management systems.

The Sports sphere have also not been left out in this very much welcome life style as much sophisticated technological gadgets and procedures are currently in use in sports, apart from the video recording and communication systems used to create reliable communication between the different sports and it’s audience or spectators as the case may be, many more advancements which is not geared towards this goal has also evolved over the years.

Many of the recent technologies in sports has been introduced to reduce the rate of controversy in the game and make decisions more precise, this is because these sports involves very fast actions which sometimes is hard to be completely comprehended and followed up by the human mind, thus posing huge problem for the officiators in every sports competition and also the spectators sometimes are not clear with their view as these action proceeds very rapidly.

Slow motion cameras has been introduced over the years to support the replay system hence, during replays, every bit of very fast actions can be easily appreciated as these movements are shown at a speed which is very much less than its original speed thus giving the viewers much time to apprehend what actually happened throughout the course of this action.

The camera systems have also been utilized in the goal detection technology to track the motion of fast moving balls so as to produce a definite proof of whether the balls had actually crossed the line or not, this has simplified decision making in the game of soccer especially, with many goals being detected and awarded though this means, electrical and magnetic field principles have also been employed in the goal line technology such that through the movement of charges over a magnetic field, the actual movement of the soccer ball over the goal line is detected just when it moves a distance of one millimeter over this line.

This has come as a response to many false goals being awarded and many teams being denied of ‘true’ goals which would have totally changed the outcome of their games. Sweden’s Marko Devic’s goal denied against England and England’s Frank Lampard’s shot which went over the goal line but wasn’t awarded a goal in their 4-1 defeat to Germany in the 2010 FIFA World Cup hammered on the need for a more precise goal judgement system apart from the referee and his linesmen.

Demystifying the VAR

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VAR is an abbreviation which stands for Video Assistant Referee, on a plain view, this consists of off-pitch referee and a much advanced video and camera systems connected to the pitch which shows every action going on in the pitch. The video assistant referee system which have also been previously used in the English FA cup competition finals and the Carabao cup, uses high speed cameras to capture every action going on in the pitch, this is relayed to the staffs at the VAR room.

Staffs at the VAR room are also professional referees, in fact, in the 2018 world cup video assistant referee system staffs consists of four out of the whole thirteen (13) referees who were selected to officiate the whole competition, thus four referee’s who are not currently officiating any match on the pitch joins the team at the VAR room.

The VAR system consists fifteen(15) screens which shows about thirty-three (33) camera angles, this ensures that the whole actions taking place in the pitch is completely relayed to the officials at the room, here the chief Video assistant referee makes the final decision on calls and this is communicated to the on-pitch referee.

The officials at the VAR room takes time to review every action going on in the pitch before alerting the officiating referee on the action to take, the on-field referee is also equipped with a high-power communication earpiece through which the decisions from the off-pitch video assistant is conveyed, he therefore makes signs of an ongoing communication by pointing to his earpiece, this halts the play until he is through with the interaction between him and his chief video assistant.

In some cases, the off-pitch video assistant might instruct the on-pitch referee to watch the replays from the television in the pitch, the referee makes the appropriate signal and the game is paused for this process, the referee may choose to cancel his previous decision or continue with it. The Video Assistant Referee system will be a determining factor in all decisions taken in any action going on in the pitch, this includes goals, spot kicks, fouls and resultant bookings. Hence players who were previously issued a yellow card might be demanded to leave the pitch with a red card should the VAR team consider the foul too harsh for just a yellow card, spot kicks and red cards which had already been awarded might also be cancelled following calls from the team behind the Video Assistant Referee screen.

The VAR system in the current FIFA World Cup is a two room setting located in Moscow, every decision for every match, regardless of the part of the country where it is been played is taken from this room as the cameras from all the stadiums where the games will be played is properly connected to this room, this saves the cost of constructing a VAR room for each stadium that will host the matches of the competition.

"I would say to the fans, players and coaches that it will have an impact, a positive impact, that is what the results of the study show from almost 1,000 live matches that were part of the experiment, the level of the accuracy increased from 93% to 99%. It's almost perfect. We have looked into all the details and benefits it can bring Of course, we need to speed up the reviews and the communication to the referees that are applying it but also for the general public”.

FIFA president Infantino speaking on the Video Assistant Referee.

What is at stake?

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The VAR system brings 99% precision to the game of soccer in terms of decisions taking as regards the actions going on in the pitch and will ensure that each team is treated with equity, it also relives the referee of some errors as it provides the platform for assisted decisions, ‘two heads will always be better than one’ they say.

Unfortunately, the VAR also comes along with some problems and also introduces a new strain of controversy to the round-leather game, while it provides a platform for assisted decisions, it also provides a platform for biased decisions as every referee has to see every situation from his own perspective and reasoning, even though these referees are trained to have a common orientation as regards decision making, individual orientation still ensures that a little difference exists between these officials and the actions they take.

This bias and the process through which the VAR teams goes prolongs the amount of time taken to make a decision, hence the match might have to be paused for a couple of minutes to enable the VA Referee to take his decision and relay them to the referee at the pitch. Bias in decision taking also decreases the reliability of the decisions made in a match as a player may be punished at half time for a foul committed during the game play which was not detected around this time this will even bring mire controversy to the game instead of dealing with already existing controversies.

Not only does the Video Assistant Referee inflict more cost in the running of the competition, it also exposes the competition to a new set of prejudice, the idea of a Video Assistant Referee is an awesome one and if well implemented will make decisions more straight forward but controversies are unarguably one of the interesting aspects of the game of football and every sports as a whole, fans are also excited as they contemplate and argue over the integrity of decisions made by the referees, even though this controversies get uglier at times, modifications to this awesome invention should have this in mind and also an attempt to hasten decision making and decisions taking through this technique should also be enable the team take decisions on time and avoid unnecessary pausing of the game.

REFERENCES

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1. What is VAR, what are the rules and how is it being used at the 2018 world cup? ~telegragh
2. VAR, how does it work? ~radiotimes
3. World cup to use VAR technology for first time ~foxnews
4. VAR world cup 2018, how does it work ~independent

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