5 stats proving VAR left a stain on the World Cup

The 2019 Women’s World Cup was the best tournament yet, as there were wondergoals and nail-biting matches galore. Unfortunately, three letters somewhat overshadowed the greatness on the pitch during the group stages: V.A.R.

Known “affectionately” by the abbreviation “VAR”, the “Video Assistant Referee” has been implemented in Germany’s top league, the Bundesliga, to great effect. When the communication between the on-field official and official in the booth is seamless and the governing bodies have created clear guidelines for when VAR should be used, the new technology greatly increases the accuracy of the calls on the field without sacrificing on the quality of the game.

At the 2019 Women’s World Cup, VAR didn’t have this positive impact on the product. Instead, VAR was implemented hastily by FIFA without thorough training, women were not hired to be the actual video assistant referees, and the rules themselves were not clearly defined. This led to goalkeepers, for example, having the impossible task of needing to re-learn how to defend penalties out of fear of VAR penalizing them for slightly jumping off the line.

VAR calls were frequent and stifled the game to the extent that FIFA had to make significant changes in the knockout stages. This improved the flow of the elimination games later in the tournament, but, well, this response should have come swifter in the tournament.

Here are five key statistics illustrating the impact VAR had on the 2019 Women’s World Cup, which truly shined when the checks and reviews eased.

All statistics are taken from the official FIFA document on referring at the World Cup.

There were 10.28 VAR checks per match

In 52 total World Cup matches, there were a whopping 535 incidents checked. The difference between a check and a review is a matter of time. With a check, the referee in the booth tells the official on the field that they are checking for possible offsides, handball, etc., and then the official can decide whether they want to take a closer look at the incident. This would be a review.

Although checks are less time consuming than reviews, so-called “serious” checks do cause a brief pause from the actual game. Unlike other sports, the clock in soccer is always running, so these checks can be disruptive, even if they come after natural stoppages in play like a goal or a foul. They can take viewers out of the game and frustrate players, especially if they wanted to take a free kick quickly.

How frequent is 10.28 checks per game? Well in a 90-minute match, that means there was a check every 8 minutes and 45 seconds.

In the 2018 Men’s World Cup, there were 7.1 checks per game, or one check every 12 minutes and 40 seconds. That’s still too frequent, but that number is considerably lower than the number of checks per game in the Women’s World Cup. This may be because the officials in the booth were trying too hard to aid the officials on the field, questioning their decisions instead of trusting in the accuracy of the on-field officials’ (both the main referee and side judges) judgments.

A match had a 63 percent chance of having a review

That means most of these checks were bogus. So if there were 10.28 checks per game but only 0.63 of these checks necessitated a full review from the official, that means 9.65 of these checks did nothing but waste time. There are always going to be checks for the sake of caution in high-leverage moments, but there’s a huge disparity in the number of checks and actual reviews.

Overall, 33 decisions were fully reviewed by VAR, so there was a more than 50/50 chance that an individual game was going to be reviewed.

A check occurred every 1.6 games at this year’s World Cup compared to a check every 3.2 games at last year’s World Cup. That’s a difference in double the number of games before a review occurred.

The accuracy did improve

VAR’s No. 1 goal is to improve the accuracy of the calls on the field, and if we go by FIFA’s value, it seems that VAR did at least accomplish its main goal. On their own, the officials were excellent, making the right call 93.08 percent of the time, which VAR bumped up to a 98.50 percent clip.

More penalties because of VAR

In total, 29 decisions were changed after checks, and most of these decisions (13) led to penalty kicks for the attacking team. As many goals were disallowed as given after VAR review, but because VAR led to more penalty opportunities and also led to encroachment calls on goalkeepers, VAR led to more goals scored.

How much time did VAR cost?

The main positive of VAR is the increase in the accuracy of the calls, but the main drawback is the number of extra time checks take in a game that is supposed to be free-flowing without major stoppages. There’s a trade-off between accuracy and time, but was it met at the 2019 Women’s World Cup?

According to FIFA, the average VAR check takes 37 seconds, where a 1 minute, 33-second stoppage occurs after a full review.

Using the 10.28 checks per game and 0.63 reviews per game, that means about 7 minutes and 30 seconds were taken off the clock per game by VAR. But the problem is that not every check led to a pause since only 53 checks of the 535 were deemed “serious”. Accounting for 53 “serious” checks in 52 games, that means there was about one “serious” check per game in addition to 0.63 full reviews.

That means it’s also possible just a little over 1 minute and 30 seconds were taken per game for VAR, whether it was a check or a review. That would be an added 45 seconds of stoppage time to each half, which seems more reasonable than, say, 3 minutes and 45 seconds per half.

This seems like a small overall price to pay for accuracy, but, again, FIFA didn’t give us a breakdown for how many checks were done for group stage games vs. knockout stage games, as the latter felt less disjointed by checks despite being just as likely to be interrupted by review.