What is VAR in football?

VAR's remit is deliberately narrow. First come goals: the goal itself plus any offside, foul or handball in the attacking move that produced it. Second are penalty decisions: an awarded penalty can be cancelled and a missed one can be given after review. Third are direct red cards; a red built from two yellows is outside the system's reach. Fourth is the wrong-player scenario: when the referee cards the wrong man, VAR identifies the correct one.

Nothing beyond those four categories can be reviewed. Yellow cards, corners, throw-ins and every other whistle of the match remain the on-field officials' responsibility. The boundary exists to stop every decision migrating to a screen and the game grinding to a halt.

The system runs on two levels: checks and reviews. The video assistant referee silently checks every incident in the four categories while play continues, and most checks end without the on-field referee ever being involved. When a possible clear and obvious error appears, the VAR recommends a review. For factual matters such as offside, the referee may change the decision on the VAR's information alone; for judgement calls, the referee walks to the pitchside monitor and watches the footage in person.

The threshold is the backbone of the whole design: VAR steps in when a decision is clearly wrong, not merely debatable. Where reasonable interpretation exists, the on-field call stands, a reminder that the system was built to remove grave errors rather than to replace the referee.

The VAR is a qualified referee watching the match through banks of screens, connected to the on-field referee by a permanent radio link. The role is not solitary: assistant VARs and replay operators scan different camera angles simultaneously. The team works from the video operation room, housed either inside the stadium or at a centralised facility serving the whole competition.

When the on-field referee goes to the monitor, the trip is announced by drawing a rectangle in the air, and whatever the footage shows, the last word is spoken on the pitch. For viewers the process takes two visible forms: quick corrections made on information alone, and full on-field reviews where the match pauses for several minutes.