Let’s avoid microscopic VAR intervention, says UEFA referees’ chief

European soccer must avoid going in the direction of microscopic VAR intervention, UEFA refereeing director Roberto Rosetti said on Tuesday.

Technology was introduced to erase clear and obvious errors, but supporters have become frustrated that it is causing matches to be re-refereed.

Rosetti did not criticise any one competition, although he shared the general concern that VAR was at risk of going too far.

“I believe we forgot the reason why VAR was introduced,” Rosetti said. “We forgot a little bit. Everywhere. You remember, eight years ago, I came to London (to brief journalists). We discussed ‘what VAR stands for’.

“We spoke about clear mistakes. Why we spoke about clear and obvious mistakes. Technology works so well in factual decisions. For interpretations, subjective evaluation is more difficult.

“I believe that we need, at the end of the season in our meetings, to speak about this. We cannot go in this direction of microscopic VAR intervention. We love football like it is. When you are watching (a) situation with a super slow motion, you can find a lot of things.”

Rosetti also said more work was needed to come up with a common interpretation of the handball law across Europe, and said he would speak again to referees’ chiefs around the continent about it.

“We must speak only one technical language (on handball),” he said. “We were speaking a lot for sure before the season, we need to speak again (and have) only one uniform and consistent interpretation. We are working for this.”

Rosetti said European soccer’s governing body was delighted with the new captain-referee communication protocol that was introduced ahead of Euro 2024.

“We are very happy with this,” he said. “It’s about respect and about protecting the image of the game.”

The UEFA Champions League resumes later on Tuesday with four knockout round playoff matches.

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