While the remaining 8 teams of the FIFA World Cup 2022 in Qatar compete in the quarter-finals, it is worth noting that it is not only soccer that has captured the world's attention, but also the video assistant referee (VAR) technology.
Like it or hate it, the VAR is a part of football games today.
Many football fans question whether the system made the game better or if it added unnecessary some complication to the beautiful game, especially this time in Qatar, as a number of controversial (引起争议的) decisions were made involving VAR – it slows down the game, offside law (越位规则) is sometimes not flexible.
The introduction of the VAR means at the top-level football now tends to pause and delay with the on-field referee often waiting for decisions to be made by those located in offices often far away from the stadiums themselves.
Actually, the use of video match officials (VMOs) in football was included in the 2018/2019 edition of the Laws of the Game and was already used at the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Since then, the system has been used in over 100 competitions worldwide.
Despite criticisms, FIFA thought VAR's first show to be a success, with referee committee head Pierluigi Collina claiming that 99.3 percent of "match-changing" decisions were called correctly at the World Cup – "very, very close to perfection". Without VAR, referees called 95% of incidents correctly.
We should admit that sports tech is still far from perfect in the field of sports events. People's emotions are not towards those technologies themselves, but the current shortcomings of the application of the technology.
The controversies in the football field are not caused by VAR alone as there are too many uncertain factors on the court, which is a part of the game drama. For example, the penalty kick (点球) in the penalty area is judged in a variety of situations.
