https://www.theifab.com/news/ifab-a...supports-recommendations-to-improve-the-game/ The most interesting thing, at least from an entertainment perspective... "It was agreed at the meeting that referees’ live communication of video assistant referee (VAR)‑related decisions to the public, both in the stadium and via broadcasters, would be trialled for 12 months in international competitions, and that it would initially be rolled out at the FIFA Club World Cup™ in Morocco, which begins on 1 February." Also: "The Board also discussed clarifications relating to the Laws of the Game 2023/24, including the confirmation of the published guidelines on “deliberate play” in offside situations. The guidelines were released following a number of high-profile situations, based on the expectation that a player who is clearly in an offside position should not become “onside” on all occasions when an opponent moves and touches the ball." More at the link
"The Board also discussed clarifications relating to the Laws of the Game 2023/24, including the confirmation of the published guidelines on “deliberate play” in offside situations. The guidelines were released following a number of high-profile situations, based on the expectation that a player who is clearly in an offside position should not become “onside” on all occasions when an opponent moves and touches the ball." Or what will be known in the future as “The Marcus Rashford clause”
Got to click through. It's actually about the scenarios when a defender touches the ball and it resets (or doesn't reset) offside. The trials regarding the live mic to fans will be interesting. This isn't so much about announcing a call--which is what you get in the NFL/NHL and their collegiate equivalents, but more about explaining a call. As I have said before, there will simply be some who are not good at it, which will make things worse in some situations. I also wonder, given this is at the international level, how comfortable some of our CONMEBOL friends (and others) will be with English. I suppose something like this is inevitable. But given the nature of the sport and how VAR works, I think it's a miss to pursue the NFL/NHL route rather than the rugby one. I'm not sure that hearing the result of the decision, without hearing the conversation, is actually going to improve anything. And it also sets an obvious precedent that ALL referee decisions could be communicated publicly. And, at that point, you're talking about some pretty big changes to how the sport looks and works.
Starting at Club World Cup, refs at FIFA events will inform crowd and TV viewers clarification over VAR decisions. If this works, it will also be done at U-20 World Cup, then Women's World Cup.— Simon Stone (@sistoney67) January 18, 2023
It will be interesting to see what kind of clarification there will be.. If there is only a sentence of basically repeating what the screen already says, it may be pretty useless and redundant.
And I genuinely can’t imagine it will be more than that. Think about the language an NFL referee uses after consulting replay. Occasionally you get a ‘why’ to some extent. But most of the time it’s just “after further review ________.” And that blank is just filled in with the result. At least at the international level, I’m not envisaging referees having (or wanting?) a lot of latitude to get into explanations. Particularly when comfort with English will vary.
I’m hoping for Ed hochuli level explanations of the decisions, giving long interpretations when needed.
I’m interested in seeing if the explanations are more fleshed out in MLS, when this inevitably happens there. Barkey talked about this on some recent episode of the Check Complete podcast. He said that PRO and MLS wanted to have in-stadium announcements, as well as live television feeds of OFR conversations, but couldn’t do it with IFAB/FIFA’s approval. In-stadium announcements are one thing, and I think, for a variety of reasons, those could work better in MLS than they do in the international game, but I disagree very strongly with the idea about broadcasting OFR conversations live. That can only go poorly for referees. If you don’t think that fans and media will be taking quotes out of context an drastically overreacting to relatively minor wrong things that referees say, then you’ve been living under a rock and ignoring all of society for the past decade. These risks to referees will have a Chilling Effect on their conversations, which will hurt the quality of the OFR process. People obsess over the three live mic reviews we had at MLS Is Back, but they are way over-celebrated. Two of them were for completely uncontroversial, objective offside position decisions, and the last was a clear handball offense that notably featured quite little conversation between the referee and the VAR (I wonder why!). The referees gain nothing from this and have everything to lose. And I mean everything. If this system comes into play, it is only a matter of time before a referee gets unjustly fired because of fan/media overreaction to something they said (which will, of course, make the Chilling Effect even worse!).
are you sure these announcements would be in English? Wouldn't they just be in the referee's native language? Which would make it not very useful in a place where that isn't the local language. Glad to see some offside clarification - getting back to "control" of the ball seems sensible to me, but I don't think I agree with all of their video examples
For international matches they would absolutely be in English. I could see CONMEBOL being the one place where an exception is carved. But the experiment seems to be exclusively at FIFA events right now (though, of course, that will expand).
No. The Rashford incident is not included here, since no opponent touched the ball. More likely the recent incident where Salah scored against Wolves in the FA Cup two weeks ago from an obvious OS position after a defender, Gomes, misplayed his interception attempt and the ball ended up at Salah's feet. PH
It just dawned on me that the first place we will really see this with a lot of eyes is at the WWC. Huh.
This whole announcement thing seems to be more of a half-measure of avoiding giving "the people" what they really want and that is the ability to hear the discussion in real time between the VAR and the referee during an OFR or during a check. People want to know how the sausage is made in the VAR room. I don't know what this will accomplish other than the occasional "there was a penalty kick, however, there was an offside in the build up and thus no penalty kick..." situation. As others have said, this won't add any value. The NFL more than maybe any other sport in the world has been the most advanced when it comes to using technology and instant replay. This past weekend, I saw them use basically replay in real time to correct factual errors (i.e. a catch was ruled an incomplete and without even going to a formal review, they just told the referees to correct and it change it to a catch). They have shown they are willing to test the limits of replay and even tried it for subjective decisions. Despite all that, even they have not allowed access to the public about what conversations are had during any reviews between the referee and the booth. There is a reason why...
Agree. Though also agree with @RedStar91 that it's not what people really want. And just to clarify, I agree with you here 100% and have been singing this tune anytime anyone raises the issue. When I said not going this route is a "miss" above, I just meant that the pursued solution isn't going to satiate the public desire for transparency. Only the live broadcast of the conversation between CR and VAR will satisfy the people who care about this. But it would be bad for all the reasons you lay out. Also, in rugby there is a conversation in real-time as the referee and his touch judges look at the big screen. That's just not what happens in our sport. To add to this issue, in rugby foul play is punished if it is visible to the VMO but not the on-field officials (indeed, the referee even initiates the VMO process because he thinks something was missed). The nuance of "well, sure, that's probably a foul but it's not clearly a penalty" or "yeah it's more red than yellow but it's not clearly red" is not something rugby officials have to deal with. And those types of conversations in the football world would be maddening to the public. Finally, we have the issue of natural stoppages and even longer delays. All this is a long way of saying that rugby has the gold standard for this because of the way the sport is structured. But our sport simply can't do it, without changing the sport itself in a lot of different ways. So transparency will always be short of that gold standard. It's worth remembering that even the super transparent conversations from MLS, CONMEBOL and the Dutch league are often edited.
I watched a lot of cricket last year. If you want to see replay done right, watch cricket. Also, good for napping. Rugby does a lot of things right with referee/player interactions and also referee/replay.
cricket has a lot of interesting technology so the decision is fairly straightforward in most cases once the tech has time to rebuild the play in question. I watch a lot of Aussie rules. They've struggled a bit with their limited replay/score review system. But they don't use replay for anything other than those score reviews. More interesting is the umpires being mic'd up so we can hear their discussions with the players.
Stop action games like cricket, baseball, American football, and tennis are more easily suited to video. Especially as most of the decisions reviewed are objective.
International referees have to pass a test on English. One time that my daughter was taking the test at a CONCACAF session, there were, I think, six referees whose first language was English. There were only five perfect scores.
La explicación en voz alta del VAR es un fiasco. Lo que se está haciendo es comunicar la decisión, pero no explicarla. Avance flojo, por no decir que genera más demora, antes con la señalización era igual de efectivo.— ArbitroInternacional (@ArbitroInteBlog) February 8, 2023
Translation...I think. "The loud explanation of the VAR is a fiasco. What is being done is communicate the decision, but not explain it. Slow progress, not to say that it generates more delay, before with signaling it was just as effective."
"The loud explanation of the VAR is a fiasco. What they are doing is communicating the decision, but not explaining it. Weak progress, not to mention that it generates more delay, before with signaling it was just as effective." Only including this because it does change the meaning a bit.