FA want to trial 'coach's challenge' in bid to reduce VAR delays

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The FA are mulling over a ‘coach’s challenge’ in an effort to cut down on the number of VAR delays. The technology has been used in the Premier League since 2019/20.

But rather than reduce the amount of controversial refereeing decisions, complaints have only grown, with some believing that VAR has not managed to cut out mistakes from officials. Others have been left irritated at the lengthy stoppages that the technology has caused.

One route that the FA could go down to reduce that is by using a technique such as a coach's challenge. That would see a similar system to cricket being implemented where coaches would have two unsuccessful appeals to use per game, a successful overturn would see be an appeal be retained.

VAR and other technology would be used for factual decisions such as offsides but for subjective decisions, coaches would have a chance to make a VAR review. The International FA Board (Ifab) is set to hold a two-year review of VAR and the FA will push for a trial scheme.

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Chief executive of the FA, Mark Bullingham, said after Ifab’s annual meeting: “The other interesting area is looking at what can we learn from other trials being done? So [FVS] and where you have a model where referees are refereeing the game but then the coach has a challenge system.

“What can we learn from that? Are there elements of that we should consider adopting for the future? Because that changes the dynamic, that reduces the amount of times when there is a VAR intervention and effectively puts the onus on the coach.

“I think that’s just something which we might continue to learn as we trial that model in the parts of the game that fundamentally can’t afford full VAR at the moment — but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily the wrong model for the future.”

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He added: “There is a review going on looking at how we use VAR best and that balance between getting the big decisions right and not slowing the game down.”

And while the FA would be big advocates of the system, former referee David Elleray would not agree. Speaking about the introduction of challenges, the now Ifab technical director said: “There’s no reason to have challenges with VAR because the video match officials check every single incident. It is mainly designed for competitions where you’ve only got one, two, three or maximum four cameras.”

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