How VAR Actually Works: The Protocol, Not the Arguments

Five categories, not four

Nearly every explainer lists four things VAR can review. The current Laws list five.

One category of review has been largely automated — see semi-automated offside.

	Reviewable
a	Goal / no goal
b	Penalty / no penalty
c	Red cards — including a clearly incorrect second caution
d	Mistaken identity — red or yellow card
e	Clearly incorrectly awarded corner kick — competition option

The fifth carries a condition: it applies only “if the decision can be changed immediately and without delaying the restart”, and it is a competition option rather than a universal rule. It is also the single exception to the protocol’s own statement that every principle must apply in every match using VAR.

So a page saying “VAR reviews four things” is describing an earlier version of the protocol.

The threshold: clear and obvious

VAR does not exist to get decisions right. It exists to catch decisions that were clearly wrong.

The protocol allows intervention only for a “clear and obvious error” or a “serious missed incident”, and states the consequence explicitly: the original decision given by the referee will not be changed unless the video review clearly shows that the decision was a clear and obvious error.

This is the source of most frustration with VAR, and it is deliberate. A decision that was merely arguable is meant to stand. If the footage leaves room for a second opinion, the protocol’s answer is that the referee’s first opinion survives.

The referee must decide first

Principle 2 forbids something people often assume VAR permits:

The referee must always make a decision, i.e. the referee is not permitted to give ‘no decision’ and then use the VAR to make the decision.

A referee cannot shrug, wave play on, and let the booth sort it out. They must commit — and then that commitment is what gets tested. Allowing play to continue is itself a decision, and one that can be reviewed.

Two further principles reinforce who is in charge. Only the referee can initiate a review; the VAR may only recommend one. And the final decision is always the referee’s, whether taken on the VAR’s information or after an on-field review.

Nobody gets to ask for it

This is the design choice that separates football from most sports that adopted video review.

There are no challenges. No manager’s flag, no captain’s request, no limited allocation. Principle 12 explains why: as the VAR will automatically ‘check’ every situation/decision, there is no need for coaches or players to request a ‘review’.

Every incident is already being checked. A challenge system would add nothing except a way for the better-resourced side to spend it well.

Compare what other sports did with the same problem. Baseball’s ABS system gives each team two challenges, usable only by the batter, pitcher or catcher, kept while successful. The NFL built its review system around coaches’ challenges entirely. Football looked at the same question and refused the model — it checks everything and lets nobody ask.

Principle 7 goes further and forbids the lobbying outright: players and team officials must not surround the referee or attempt to influence whether a decision is reviewed, the review process, or the outcome.

No time limit, and that is written down

Transparency as enforcement rather than courtesy is a recurring design. Figure skating rebuilt its entire scoring system on the same principle after 2002 — see figure skating scoring.

There is no time limit for the review process as accuracy is more important than speed.

That sentence is in the protocol. Every complaint about how long VAR takes is a complaint about a trade-off the Laws made openly and on purpose.

Alongside it sits principle 8: the referee must remain visible during the review process, to ensure transparency. The walk to the monitor is not theatre — it is a requirement that the person deciding is seen deciding.

Once play restarts, the window mostly closes

If play has stopped and been restarted, the referee may not undertake a review. There are only two exceptions:

• mistaken identity, and
• a potential sending-off for violent conduct, spitting, biting, or extremely offensive, insulting or abusive actions.

Everything else is finished the moment the game resumes. This is what makes the restart such a hard boundary, and why officials sometimes delay one while a check completes.

There is a related subtlety in principle 9. If play continues after an incident that is later reviewed, any disciplinary action taken during the intervening period still stands, even if the original decision is overturned — except a caution or sending-off for stopping a promising attack or for denying an obvious goalscoring opportunity, which are cancelled because the reason for them has disappeared.

What the VAR actually sees

The VAR works in the video operation room (VOR), with one or more assistant VARs (AVARs) and, depending on the setup, replay operators. Only authorised people may enter the room or communicate with them during the match.

The VAR has independent access to and replay control of the broadcast footage, and is on the officials’ communication system — able to hear everything the referees say, but able to speak to the referee only by pushing a button, so the referee is not distracted.

The 2026/27 Laws also formalise semi-automated offside technology (SAOT), defined as technology that sends offside position information immediately to the VAR and, in an advanced version, directly to the assistant referees. That is the mechanism behind faster offside calls, and it feeds the offside law rather than replacing any part of it.

For the Laws as a whole, see the rules of soccer; more rules coverage is in rules and techniques.