Football to copy tennis and allow managers VAR challenges

Football is introducing a cricket and tennis-style challenge system that will allow players and managers to order reviews of refereeing decisions.

Two days after it emerged Premier League clubs would vote on whether to scrap Video Assistant Referees next month, Fifa has unveiled a simplified version of the increasingly-controversial technology that goes some way towards this.

Called Football Video Support (FVS), it does away with human VARs altogether and puts the power to order reviews of refereeing decisions into the hands of players and managers.

Borrowing from the system long used in cricket and tennis, teams start each match with two “review requests”, which will reduce if an on-field decision is upheld but not if it is overturned.

As with VAR, reviews are limited to four match-changing incidents: goals, penalty decisions, red cards and cases of mistaken identity.

Managers order a review by twirling their finger in the air and giving the fourth official a review card showing the type of decision being challenged.

The referee is then called to a pitch-side monitor and shown footage of the incident by a replay operator.

Players can also recommend a review to their managers but the final say on triggering one lies with the latter.

Fifa referees chief Pierluigi Collina revealed on Friday that the system had already made its debut during this month’s Blue Stars/Fifa Youth Cup in Zurich, featuring in all 36 men’s and women’s matches there, after trials of it were approved at that level.

He told national associations during Fifa’s annual congress in Bangkok that the outcome had been “very, very positive”.

He added: “Our aim is to continue to trial this new system, namely in our youth competitions.

“We hope to be able to give you, or to give all of you, who have the interest the possibility to implement this system on your competitions.”

FVS has been developed for competitions that cannot afford VAR or in matches where fewer cameras are used.

But there have long been calls for a challenge system in the likes of the Premier League amid mounting opposition to VAR technology that currently sees every match-changing incident reviewed.

These calls are only likely to grow now such a system is actually being introduced into football but its wider adoption could hinge on the outcome of what could be years of trials.

One of the biggest proponents of an “appeal system” has been Gary Lineker, who polled his followers on X on Friday about whether VAR should be scrapped, retained, or modified to such a system.

Early responses indicated half wanted to ditch it, with a third backing a switch to an appeal system.

Speaking on the latest The Rest is Football podcast, the Match of the Day presenter branded VAR a “mess”, adding: “They should probably keep offside and goal-line technology, but I think you either scrap it, the rest of it, and I’d possibly vote for that. Or, I think, perhaps more realistically, take it to an appeal system.

“VAR, they can’t intervene unless someone appeals, and it’s got to be the captain, and they’ve got to tell you what they’re appealing for. It doesn’t mean to say it’s a goal and you’ve got to find some kind of foul somewhere. You’ve got to stipulate what that foul is. If the captain does it, ‘He pushed him – have a look’. And if it’s a foul, it’s a foul. There’s no bar.”

Suggesting teams were given “maybe one appeal a half”, he continued: “It would add to the drama. You’d see it on the screens and all that kind of stuff.

“I think that’s the only way out of this if you’re going to carry on with it.”

Key to FVS’s success will be whether the challenge system is used responsibly by players and managers or whether it is abused.

That will include whether reviews are used tactically for time-wasting purposes and how players, managers and fans of teams who challenge decisions react if those decisions are upheld.

As well as FVS, trials have been approved for something known as VAR ‘Light’, which has also been developed for competitions with limited budgets.

This still uses a human VAR and does not grant player and manager challenges.

The Football Association of Wales last month announced plans to introduce the system to the country’s top-tier Cymru Premier.

The English Football League has previously explored using VAR Light in its own competitions.