Nicola Rizzoli admits “a few mistakes have been made” with VAR but “so far the results have been positive”.
The referee designator has been overseeing the introduction of the technology this season, and he spoke after a meeting with Coaches today.
“We’re improving day after day,” Rizzoli insisted in a Press conference.
“The referees have worked well and even if there wasn’t much experience at the start of the season, things are getting better.
Nicola Rizzoli admits “a few mistakes have been made” with VAR but “so far the results have been positive”.
The referee designator has been overseeing the introduction of the technology this season, and he spoke after a meeting with Coaches today.
“We’re improving day after day,” Rizzoli insisted in a Press conference.
“The referees have worked well and even if there wasn’t much experience at the start of the season, things are getting better.
“A few mistakes have been made, and they could have been avoided, but that’s how you learn and gain experience.
“The referees have been totally open to this and they’re convinced by the viability of the project. We all believe in this and we move forward together.
“So far the results have been positive, we analysed several incidents with the Coaches, explaining our reasoning and also underlining the mistakes.”
A video was then shown of a penalty Genoa were rightly given against Juventus, but in which the Grifone attacker had been offside in the build-up.
“The penalty wasn’t seen and the decision was rightly changed,” Rizzoli said.
“The previous offside position of the attacker wasn’t evaluated though, we got that wrong and we admitted it.
“As I’ve already said, it takes experience and we’ll try to make sure these mistakes don’t happen in the future.
“We have very precise images, with lines which are drawn much better than the ones you see on TV.
“In the match between Atalanta and Juventus, when [Mario] Mandzukic’s goal was ruled out, we worked very well by taking it back to [Stephan] Lichtsteiner’s foul on [Papu] Gomez.
"We've looked at our mistakes too, there were 11 of them out of 60 corrections made.
"One was about protocol, when the referee stopped the play too early. One was about possession in the attacking phase, then there were two offsides, a penalty and six handballs.
"Of the 11 errors, seven influenced the result. Without VAR there would have been 5.6 per cent errors, with the technology we've reached 1 per cent.
"Our goal is to get to practically zero, but 1 per cent is certainly acceptable.
"Errors have decreased by 8.8 per cent, while penalties have increased 5.5 per cent. That means there's more control in the box.
"There have been fewer red cards and there haven't been any for protesting, compared to five at this time last year.
"We think these statistics are very positive, there are more composed attitudes and you can see the benefits."