The TOR - SJ game yesterday had a VAR review which resulted in a player being ejected. The foul in question resulted in an injured player on the field. Here is how I saw it go down: 1. Foul occurred 2. Toronto player injured. Restart is delayed as he is being attended to 3. SJ completes a sub for a player not involved in the play 4. 2 minutes after the foul just before play was to be restarted, the referee talks to the VAR and reviews the play resulting in an ejection. Putting aside the long delay to go to the VAR, if SJ had subbed off the player that ended up with the red, what would have technically happened? The sub was agreed upon and completed over 2 minutes prior, but play had not restarted. Does the restart of play matter? Would the referee have been able to back out of the sub? Or would he technically have had to show the red to a player on the bench resulting in no reduction in the players on the pitch?
https://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/2017-mls-week-27-referee-discussion.2069890/#post-35856443 Per the LOTG, if that happened today, it would have to be 11 v 11. Per the spirit of the game and the point of VARs, it's supposed to be 11 v 10. I think this incident exposed something no one foresaw. I suspect you'll see (or maybe not see, but they will occur) immediate instructions about not allowing a sub when a VR is possible. And then something will either get formalized into the VAR protocols or there will be an explicit carve out into the Laws if the experiment is made permanent.
Sub is already called for and waiting when the foul occurs. I think you would have to allow that sub to occur. This is also a situation in which an injury has occurred, and tactically both teams need to have the ability to sub during that time period. I think the only solution would be to develop a new mechanism in which the offending player is sent off and his team can elect to have their sub returned or have a different field player removed (who would then become, in effect, the new substituted player).
Morel of the story is don't allow any subs until you are ready to restart. That said wouldn't this be a "correctable" error being acted upon before a restart if you notice this? It would be like issuing a red card to a player for FAL and then before the restart, finding out it was the substitute on the bench. Team goes back to full strength. In the case here, they play down. Just my opinion.
I don't see why you have to tbh, but I understand why tradition makes it happen. I agree with Mass Ref though, this is an issue created by VAR and I'd expect it to be fixed by VAR (though there might need to be an incident in a game where this happens for it to be fixed).
I think that is the best solution, and I'm guessing that will be the interpretation that comes out: since the player should have been sent off, the sub never took place as we now know the player was not eligible to be subbed for. But it really should be made clear, and would be wise if IFAB were to say something now before it actually happens. If it happened now, there would absolutely be a protest and a lot of drama around VR that they don't want.
This definitely should not be the moral of the story. A waiting substitution should be allowed at the beginning of a stoppage so as to lose as little time as possible. Waiting until after an injury is treated or until a wall is set for a ceremonial free kick is counterproductive and goes against standard practice. We shouldn't start doing things differently simply because VR has created a potential loophole--it's not going to affect 99.9% of matches so it shouldn't change our behavior as referees. A solution needs to be found and announced for the potential loophole instead. Bringing a player back onto the field is a lot easier than forcing one off, particularly when the Laws say the substitution is complete once the subbed player leaves and the substitute enters. Other than, "that's just the way it should be," there's no real legal justification for forcing the new player to leave. When he doesn't, what's your recourse? Booking him for entering without permission when you actually did give him permission? I guess delaying the restart would have to be your out, but that's really weird. This isn't the end of the world. This would be a very rare situation and there are two paths toward an easy fix. As @socal lurker says, it would just be smart if it's done before there's a huge controversy.
Let me clarify, don't allow a substitute when you have your referee team, in the case of those with headsets, literally in your ear trying to provide you more information about the play. It's still prior to the restart though. The laws only specify you can't correct your errors after a restart or after the end of a period of play. Just because you made multiple mistakes (no send off and a substitution being allowed) doesn't make a difference. They are errors and are still correctable. Further the laws say we can act within the spirit of the law if it fits within the framework. This seems to be a good example.
Sure. I agree with that. But watch the incident in Toronto. It doesn't even look like the VAR is suggesting there's an issue until maybe 90 seconds after the substitution was complete. So a big reason that this loophole even exists is because the VARs simply aren't (or the technology provided to the VARs isn't ) efficient enough yet. If and once it is, this would be much less of a concern because if the CR can be aware close to instantaneously that there might be a problem, it becomes easy to hold up a substitution. You make a good case, but I still don't think this is "clean," so to speak. Telling a player to leave the field who legally entered but now you want to leave because of a mistake the referee crew made is not really a "decision," but an instruction and it's an instruction that pretty much runs afoul of the LOTG as written. Yes, that's parsing words very finely, but when we're in completely uncharted territory like this, it matters. That said, the overall determination that the red carded player was indeed a player and not a substitute is a "decision" and should be respected, per the passage you're citing. So there is conflict here. The decision regarding the red card is lawful and should be respected, but you need to stretch things pretty considerably to instruct a legal player to leave. In the end, I suspect a professional level referee would get the result he wanted and the match would continue 11 v 10. But a clear instruction should be given to referees and teams that that is the desired outcome AND the power to do so should be explicitly stated in the VAR protocols.
If you don't think that the referee is allowed to do it now why would anything in the VAR protocol change that? It would have to be in the laws tbh. But I agree that VAR's need to become much more efficient time-wise. I can accept that it takes over a minute to get to a decision but it cannot take that long to realise that there is something to look at Yea it would. I'm not expecting anything though, it's just not the IFAB's style to be that proactive unfortunately.
While the laws would be better, we can craft an argument why we could do it under the Laws--the argument just isn't clean. An interpretation as part of VAR protocols that officially adopted the argument would give clarity and make a protest implausible in any practical way. As it stands now, whatever the referee did would invite one team to protest and to have a plausible argument.
Not really. The VAR protocols allow for or encourage things that either run afoul of the LOTG as written or come pretty close to doing so. A passage in the VAR protocols that explicitly lay out the proper procedure if this ever happened seems like the best course for me--particularly given that VAR is an experiment with an end date at the moment. You can't amend the LOTG to account for an experiment that might disappear (look at the sin bin experiment, which has a separate document from the IFAB). If VAR is ever permanently adopted, there are probably several things in the LOTG that will need to change to account for that (I'm thinking at least a passage in Law 5, the formal addition of the VAR as a match official, and additions to the approved signals), so a few carve outs like this would be expected. Agreed. Not sure if it's the VAR's fault or if it's the broadcasters, however. It's a problem either way and the perception will always cause the blame to fall on the VAR. But if someone is working on fixing this, I'm just hopeful the source of the problem is identified.