Video assistant referee (VAR) technology is to make its debut at the World Cup in Russia this summer, despite lingering opposition from within and outside soccer, FIFA president Gianni Infantino said on Friday.
“We are going to have in 2018, for the first time, a World Cup with VAR,” Infantino said after a meeting of the FIFA Council which, as expected, rubber-stamped the go-ahead given by the International Football Association Board two weeks ago.
“This has been approved and we are really very happy with this decision,” he added.
The World Cup, which is to take place from June 14 to July 15, will see VAR used to judge whether a goal has been scored, analyze whether a penalty should be awarded, decide on red cards and rectify if a player has been mistakenly sanctioned.
“It cannot be possible that in 2018 everybody — in the stadium or at home — knows in a few seconds if the referee has made a mistake, but not the referee himself — not because he doesn’t want to know about it, but because we forbid him to know,” Infantino said.
“Nobody knows exactly how VAR will work. There is already a lot of confusion,” said UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin, who added that VAR would not be used in next season’s Champions League. “I am not at all against it, but we must better explain when it will be used.”
Meanwhile, FIFA said it is to lift the three-decade ban on Iraq hosting international soccer with the cities of Arbil, Basra and Karbala given the go-ahead to stage official matches.
However, FIFA added that they cannot “yet” agree to a request from the Iraqi authorities to organize matches in Baghdad.
Iraq has not played full internationals on home turf since its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
The ban, covering all but domestic matches, stayed in place after the US-led invasion of 2003 toppled former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.
It was briefly lifted in 2012, but a power outage during an Iraq-Jordan match in the Iraqi Kurdish capital Arbil led FIFA to promptly reinstate it.
The FIFA Council also decided that Peru would host next year’s Under-17 World Cup with Poland staging the Under-20 tournament.
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