Roberto Rosetti, the man responsible for implementing VAR in Italy, says the technology has already been positive.
Video Assistant Referees have been introduced to the top flight for the first time this season, and while it has been largely well received, there have been some controversial incidents and complaints over the time taken to make a decision.
“I understand the fear, it’s a normal reaction when you radically change your habits,” Rosetti told Gazzetta dello Sport.
Roberto Rosetti, the man responsible for implementing VAR in Italy, says the technology has already been positive.
Video Assistant Referees have been introduced to the top flight for the first time this season, and while it has been largely well received, there have been some controversial incidents and complaints over the time taken to make a decision.
“I understand the fear, it’s a normal reaction when you radically change your habits,” Rosetti told Gazzetta dello Sport.
“It’s no longer conceivable to keep technology apart though. The VAR is improving, we’re in an experimental phase but the goal is to have a fairer and more spectacular football.
“Why lose a Scudetto, a final or a simple match because of a clear human error which can be corrected in the same time as a substitution?
“Anyone who thinks VAR is just to help the referees doesn’t understand the full impact of this epochal change.
“There have been 309 actions which have been reviewed in the first seven rounds. In 288 cases, the referee’s decision was confirmed, 21 times it was changed.
“That’s an average of three mistakes avoided per round.
“Fouls have gone down, there were 260 in the first seven rounds of last season, today we’re down at 203. Yellows have gone from 313 to 245, reds from 24 to 15.
“There’s more attention from the players, they know they’re risking more and limit certain behaviours. Protests have almost disappeared, which in Italy is some kind of miracle.
“We should also emphasise the calmness of the fans in the stadium when confronted with a decision changed by the technology.”
There are some negative effects though, like slowing the game down while the referee reviews decisions…
“It’s little or nothing, I’d note that it often takes more than a minute for a substitution.
“Let’s take an actual Serie A game though. Last season the ball was ‘in-play’ for 50 minutes and 19 seconds per game. That’s low compared to the rest of Europe.
“This season it’s 51 minutes and 10 seconds, so it’s actually gone up.
“Let’s look at the average amount of injury time in a game. In the last Serie A it was five minutes and 17 seconds, this year it’s five minutes 36. As [Nicola] Rizzoli explained, you need to recover all the time lost for the use of technology.
“That said, we need to improve. Some strides have already been made, in the first three rounds it took an average of a minute and 22 seconds to review decision because of technical problems, for example in Inter–Fiorentina and Inter-Spal.
“In the next three rounds we were down to 40 seconds. That gives us an average of 54 seconds for a referee too look at the replay and take his decision.”
Some referees go over to the monitor to view the decision, but others simply listen to the advice of the VAR in their earpiece.
“We’re convinced that the best choice is to give the referee on the pitch the final choice,” Rosetti explained.
“When there’s a subjective incident then it’s best to go and see it again, if it’s objective fact then there’s no need.
“A penalty for a foul which was seen by the VAR as a possible mistake has to be re-examined, but in two cases [Crotone-Benevento and Atalanta-Juve] the referee confirmed his choice even after the replay.
“If it’s an offside though you don’t need that control.”
Another complaint is that fans watching on television at home aren’t able to see the replays that the officials are watching.
“At the start the priority was communication with the referees on the pitch. The objective of transparency is good, in future you’ll see the images. That’s a promise.
“Maybe in the future there’ll be a replay in the stadium too.
“We’re moving forward in agreement with FIFA. It’s no longer possible to allow an irregular goal like [Thierry] Henry’s handball.
“Football is changing thanks to technology, and it’ll be a better football.”