"The referees are just not good enough." Thomas Tuchel said it plainly after England's Round of 16 exit at the World Cup, following two VAR interventions — one red card for England, one penalty for Mexico — that left fans and pundits arguing over whether either was correct. Which, in 2025, is basically the standard VAR experience.
The technology was introduced to football in late 2018 to reduce what researchers call "noise" — the undesirable variability in human judgement caused by fatigue, viewing angles, law interpretation, and the sheer chaos of a fast-moving game. On paper, it works. Across 2,195 matches in 13 countries, one study found VAR lifted decision accuracy from 92% to 98%. In the Premier League specifically, referees overturned their original decisions 95% of the time after VAR input. That's not a marginal improvement — that's a structural one.
The side effect nobody wanted to talk about
Here's the problem: VAR is changing what referees actually do on the pitch, and the early signs aren't encouraging. Studies have found that since VAR's introduction, referees award fewer red cards and penalties — the borderline calls that might get reviewed. They're second-guessing themselves before they've even made a decision, mentally pre-filtering through how VAR might see the play rather than calling what they see.
One referee put it bluntly: "Now the situation is that referees run on the field just waiting for the VAR to make decisions for them."
That's a significant shift in professional behaviour. Two small studies in the Israeli Premier League also found referees experienced greater mental fatigue during VAR matches. You're not just refereeing anymore — you're refereeing while anticipating a review panel. That's a different cognitive load entirely.
What "correct" actually costs
Croatia manager Zlatko Dalic, after his side's controversial Round of 32 loss to Portugal, said: "VAR kills emotions, it kills everything within you. We have gone too far with VAR." Whether you agree or not, the tension he's describing is real.
If a player is flagged offside by a toe — which is technically correct — what does that actually serve? The accuracy argument is philosophically coherent but experientially hollow for anyone sitting in a stadium waiting six minutes for a goal to be disallowed by a margin invisible to the naked eye. Every VAR delay is a trade-off: accuracy for flow, precision for atmosphere. Whether that trade is worth it depends entirely on what you think football is for.
For betting markets, VAR's influence on referee behaviour matters more than most people acknowledge. Fewer instinctive penalties and red cards being awarded means odds built around referee-driven variables — cards, spot kicks, match momentum — carry an extra layer of unpredictability. Markets price in expected decision-making patterns; when those patterns shift because referees are self-censoring, the model gets messier.
The deeper issue, though, is what this debate costs the people actually doing the job. Referees at every level — most of whom have zero VAR support — already face abuse, threats, and violence at rates that are driving officials out of the game entirely. Research directly links officials' mental health deterioration to verbal and physical abuse. Tuchel's post-match frustration is understandable, but the words land differently when you consider the community referee running a Sunday league game with no screen to bail them out.
The VAR argument isn't going anywhere. But the referees paying the price for it aren't always the ones in World Cup stadiums.
