Premier League should not be using VAR for marginal offside calls, suggests IFAB general secretary

According to the general secretary Lukas Brud of the law-making International Football Association Board (IFAB), VAR technology should only be used to reverse “clear and obvious” mistakes including offside decisions and should not be relied upon to try and pinpoint marginal offside calls that require lengthy stoppages to identify.

This weekend’s Premier League matches saw a number of marginal offside calls which were checked by VAR that resulted in goals ruled out for Wolves, Crystal Palace, Norwich, Brighton, and Sheffield United.

Lukas said officials on the pitch and the monitoring cameras should not become “too forensic” over offsides or any other decisions, however, he did not comment on the decisions taken in the Premier League specifically.

Brud also said that the IFAB will reissue guidance on best practice regarding VAR to competitions which use it, probably after its annual general meeting at the end of February next year, which will cover all areas that VARs look at and include information on offsides. However, Lukas made it clear that this would be one of IFAB’s standard circulars and not in response to the controversy and debate over the matter in England this weekend.

“Clear and obvious still remains – it’s an important principle. There should not be a lot of time spent to find something marginal,” Brud told the Press Agency news agency.

“If you spend multiple minutes trying to identify whether it is offside or not, then it’s not clear and obvious and the original decision should stand,” he said.

“What we really need to stress is that clear and obvious applies to every single situation that is being reviewed by the VAR or the referee,” he added.

“In theory one-millimeter offside is offside, but if a decision is taken that a player is not offside and the VAR is trying to identify through looking at five, six, seven, 10, 12 cameras whether or not it was offside, then the original decision should stand.

“This is the problem, people are trying to be too forensic. We are not looking to make a better decision, we are trying to get rid of the clear and obvious mistakes.

“If video evidence shows that a player was in an offside position, he was an offside full stop. If it’s not obvious, then the decision cannot be changed, you stay with the original decision.

“We will be communicating with all competitions that are using VAR some updates in the coming weeks because we are observing some developments that are not particularly the way they should be. With VAR we see some things that are going in a direction that we may need to readjust.”

When asked about the timescales for sending out this advice, Brud said: “I don’t know. Maybe only after the AGM. We do that on a regular basis, we call them circulars and this will just be another one. This will not be a case of ‘oh, we have to intervene’, just something we do on a regular basis.” he concluded.