UEFA Chief Refereeing Officer Roberto Rosetti: “We Don’t Want VAR To Ruin The Spirit Of Football”

UEFA’s chief refereeing officer Roberto Rosetti, who oversaw the usage of VAR in last summer’s World Cup, spoke in today’s paper edition of the Turin based newspaper Tuttosport, discussing VAR and the hand ball rule change.

“The experimentation in Italy should have lasted two years, but after only one we decided to inaugurate the project. The next steps will be to implement it in the Europa League from February, in the final of the Women’s Champions League and at the European Championships, for both men and women.”

Rosetti then discussed how VAR is used and how FIFA don’t want it to ruin the spirit of football.

“We strongly believe in video refereeing, but it is important to emphasise that it is functional to football, and not to refereeing. We are not in the presence of a new way of officiating a game, but instead faced with a recent novelty that can be functional to football to correct the obvious errors. We don’t want to ruin the spirit of the game: its intensity, rhythm and the pleasure the spectator feels when watching a show that doesn’t have to take a break of four or five minutes.”

“To summarize, there are three parts. The Silent check: the episode, that is not serious, must be managed on the field. Serious error: from the Var room they advise the referee to use the monitor on the field. Then there’s the already mentioned grey area: a subjective situation that needs to be controlled, but that can’t be modified.”

Finally, the Italian former referee discussed the new hand ball rule and how it works.

“The text of the hand ball rules have been rewritten by IFAB to make clarifications. The substantial change occurs when an attacker scores a goal with his hand or if after the touch of the hand, he scores a goal even indirectly. The goal must be cancelled even if the hand ball is unintentional.”

“In addition, the new text highlights some points on culpability that were previously only application guidelines. If the defender touches the ball with his hands/arms that are expanding the surface of his body or if the arm/ball contact occurs at or above the shoulders, usually, the referee will decide in favor of culpability.”

“Instead, when the position of the arms are close to the body, “natural”, or when the player does nothing to increase his body size, the contact must be considered regular.”