Which World Cup introduced the video assistant referee (VAR)?

VAR is a small team of officials watching the match from a separate video room, with full access to broadcast camera feeds. Their job is to keep an eye on four specific kinds of decisions and, when one of them is clearly and obviously wrong, to tell the on-field referee. The on-field referee remains the only person who can change the call, but VAR can either flag a missed incident or recommend a review on the pitchside monitor. The 2018 World Cup was the first time this system was officially used at a World Cup.

VAR does not review every decision in a match. It is restricted to four categories where a clear refereeing mistake could decide a match. The first is goals — VAR can check whether a goal was scored without an offside, a foul, or a handball in the build-up. The second is penalty decisions, whether a penalty was given or wrongly missed. The third is direct red cards, where a sending-off is being considered. The fourth is mistaken identity, the rare case where the referee books or sends off the wrong player.

Like most innovations in football, VAR arrived to a divided audience. Some welcomed it as long-overdue help for referees on the highest-stakes decisions in the sport. Others criticised it for slowing the game down, for taking emotion out of celebrations, and for sometimes producing confusing results when reviews dragged on. The 2018 World Cup itself saw VAR change some major decisions, and it has remained controversial at every tournament since — including at the 2022 World Cup, where it was used heavily in the group stages.

It is worth keeping VAR and goal-line technology separate. Goal-line technology is fully automatic and only answers one yes-or-no question: did the whole ball cross the line. VAR is much broader and involves human review of video footage. The two systems work alongside each other at modern World Cups, with goal-line technology handling its narrow, instant decision while VAR handles the slower, judgement-based reviews. Together, they have changed how a match feels from kickoff to final whistle.

This article was written using information from Wikipedia.