Germany calls for more video referee interventions

Berlin (AFP) – After more than two months of testing video assistant referees (VAR) in the Bundesliga, the German Football Association (DFB) has ruled that video referees should intervene more often, even if the onfield referee did not commit an obvious error.

“In complicated situations, in which the referee’s decision cannot be classified as an ‘obvious error’, but where the video assistant has strong doubts about the validity of the decision, he must then immediately report it to the referee,” said a DFB October 25 statement made public on Thursday by Kicker magazine.

In these cases, the field referee is now invited to check the validity of his decision on the screen.

Previously, the video assistant was to only intervene in rulings with “obvious errors”.

Kicker condemned the change, saying it “opens the door to subjective interpretations and an avalanche of video checks”.

The German football magazine claimed that RB Leipzig captain Willi Orban’s red card, which was crucial in Bayern Munich’s Bundesliga win last Saturday, was decided at the initiative of the video assistant.