Fifa is set to be given special dispensation to allow VARs to have extra powers at next year’s World Cup, including over corner-kick decisions.
World Cup organisers would be allowed by football’s lawmakers to implement the changes on a temporary or trial basis, which means they are unlikely to be rolled out in the Premier League next season.
Senior Fifa figures have been pushing for VARs to be able to intervene if they believe a corner has been awarded incorrectly. They also want video officials to be allowed to review second yellow cards to confirm a sending-off is correct.
Their argument is that in a World Cup, where the stakes are so high, they need to be as accurate as possible around potential match-changing decisions and it would be a serious issue if, for example, a mistakenly awarded corner or second yellow card altered the outcome of the World Cup final.
Such dispensations have been permitted in the past for tournaments — for example, Fifa was allowed to use VAR in its Confederations Cup and Club World Cup in 2017 as a trial before it had been formally approved by the International FA Board (Ifab), the game’s lawmakers.
There have also been claims that decisions on wrongly awarded corners have been unofficially overturned by VARs in a number of competitions, including the Champions League, even though that is meant to be against the rules.
Meanwhile the Fifa Arab Cup, which is taking place this week, is trialling a new rule aimed at cracking down on players feigning injuries. At the tournament in Qatar, a player who receives treatment for an injury has to leave the pitch for two minutes unless they have been the victim of a foul where the perpetrator received a yellow or red card.
The Leeds United manager, Daniel Farke, criticised Manchester City’s tactics on Saturday and hinted that the City goalkeeper, Gianluigi Donnarumma, may have feigned an injury to let his manager Pep Guardiola issue fresh instructions.
Farke accused Donnarumma of feigning an injury so that Guardiola could deliver instructions to his team
MATT WEST/SHUTTERSTOCK
Ifab is already planning to look at the issue of second yellow cards at its business meeting in January, and there is widespread support for the idea of VAR being used for those. Introducing the corner-kick powers for VARs is much more controversial due to the likely increase in delays, and Uefa is understood to be totally opposed to that being introduced into the broader VAR protocol.
Another radical idea that is struggling to win support is a proposed change to penalties where if the goalkeeper saves the kick, the ball is declared “dead” and a goal cannot be scored from a follow-up.
Discussions are understood to have taken place on this issue, with proponents suggesting the team awarded a penalty already has enough of an advantage.
A proposed rule change would prevent players from scoring from follow-ups if their penalty is saved, as Lukas Nmecha did against City this weekend
OLI SCARFF/AFP
Any law changes would come into force from June 1, in time for the 2026 men’s World Cup in the United States, Mexico and Canada.
Ifab board members would want to be convinced that any extension of the VAR’s powers would not lead to an increase in delays, and that any new decisions would have to be taken by video officials in a matter of seconds.
There is also growing support for a change in the offside law to end “toenail” decisions but that would not come into effect before the World Cup. The most likely change would be a new rule where a player is offside if any part of their torso is ahead of the defender, and not their foot or head.
There is a desire to change offside rules to avoid incredibly close decisions that require lengthy scrutiny
That is likely to be two years away, with formal trials required. So far, trials of offside changes have looked at there being clear daylight between attacker and defender, but initial results have suggested it gives too much advantage to the attacker and changes teams’ tactics too drastically.
Ifab is made up of the four British associations, who have one vote each, and Fifa, which has four votes. Any change to the laws of the game needs at least six of the eight votes to be passed.
