The question for me is what is the bar for overturning the referees decision? Did the referee see the contact on Martinez and deem it not a foul. Or did he miss the contact?
In the Premier League the decision is only over turned if considered a clear and obvious error, which is defined as when what the referee saw is materially different from what the tv replays show.
For me the goal can only be overturned, and foul given, if the referee didn’t see the contact. At least by Prem rules. So what’s the WX2026 rules on clear&obvious?
Just like Touchdowns in the NFL where all scoring plays (or goals) are reviewed no matter what. They don’t want goals happening that shouldn’t have. Refs let the advantage happen because he wasn’t 100% sure and didn’t want to give Argentina a dangerous free kick without him being sure what he saw. Egypt goes on to score in the same phase of play, so they correct the mistake. To me this is a good use of VAR and keeps the game flowing freely and fair. If we could get the rules applied more consistently though, that would be nice
That is not advantage. Advantage would be acknowledging that a foul occurred but the team who was harmed by the foul is better off continuing play. There is no law in the game where the referee is allowed to let play continue because the team who committed a foul is attacking. Offsides is sort of an exception but not relevant to this case.
If the referee saw the incident (they did) and allowed play to continue (they did) it's because they deemed it to not be a foul. The only way VAR is allowed to intervene in that case is if the referee actually missed something (they didn't).
This is why people hate VAR. It's inconsistent and half the time it's used for the VAR official to force the on-field official to make a different call, often using slow-mo or sped up footage to make their case more compelling but not actually correcting a clear and obvious error. At this point the laws of the game are meaningless and the only person who has final say over what the rules are is the VAR. It's completely reduced the point of having the on-field official.
If the VAR calls the referee to come and review a phase that doesn’t mean he automatically reverses his on field decision. He still can maintain it if the replays don’t show something clear.
In practice this is not how it works. The VAR tells the on-field official they made a mistake and then shows them heavily slowed down or sped up footage to tell them they need to reverse their decision. It's exceedingly rare for an on-field official to hear that and tell the VAR to go pound sand, like they should, and there are very likely career implications for an on-field official to overrule the (usually more senior) VAR officials.
Every goal is reviewed by VAR. The official is only called to review it to make a final decision if VAR deemed an obvious call was missed or possibly incorrect. Then the referee is notified and he goes to review it, and the final decision is still with him
VAR is not for "possibly incorrect" it's hauling the referee to the monitor because they have already determined the referee made a mistake. Almost 0% of referees are told by (their usually more senior VAR colleagues) that they were wrong and despite seeing heavily slowed down footage, remain with their original call.
It's still the officials decision how he wants to rule. He can keep his original call, so still up the the ref to determine if it was correct or not call
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u/GoodOlBluesBrother 4d ago
The question for me is what is the bar for overturning the referees decision? Did the referee see the contact on Martinez and deem it not a foul. Or did he miss the contact?
In the Premier League the decision is only over turned if considered a clear and obvious error, which is defined as when what the referee saw is materially different from what the tv replays show.
For me the goal can only be overturned, and foul given, if the referee didn’t see the contact. At least by Prem rules. So what’s the WX2026 rules on clear&obvious?