The Premier League is expected to agree to plans for referees to announce why they changed their decisions after VAR reviews in time for the 2024/25 season.
Match experiences have been hampered in recent years by lengthy VAR reviews and a lack of clarity around why decisions were changed. These problems are only exacerbated on pitches like Old Trafford and Anfield, where there are no big screens.
ESPN The Premier League is reportedly hoping to pass a law allowing referees to announce their decisions to the public ahead of the 2024/25 season.
I’ll keep talking The match officials turned on the microphone In which VAR decisions are explained and audio recordings can be heard between referees, PGMOL’s chief refereeing boss Howard Webb confirmed these plans.
“When you listen to the clips from shows like this, you realize what’s happening. Everything becomes clear. We’re looking at ways to improve the stadium experience,” Webb said.
“One of the things you may have seen in FIFA tournaments like the Women’s World Cup is announcements from the referee as soon as he was on the screen. So we’re looking at that and keeping an open mind about whether we can use that in the Premier League.
“It would be really useful for the referee to be able to talk to everyone in the stadium – [to explain] the basic principle.”
Referees explaining decisions out loud have been introduced at the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup as part of a 12-month trial introduced by football’s lawmakers IFAB. This initiative has now been adopted by several leagues around the world, including Major League Soccer.
The Premier League will also introduce semi-automatic offside technology (SAOT) from next season, although this will be introduced early in the season rather than at the start.
Webb added: “It will make us quicker in a lot of tight offside situations. At the moment we use software to draw lines from players’ body positions, which takes time and care. Semi-automatic offside situations will do it.” Speed up this process.
“There will still be situations where there are a lot of players in close proximity where we have to use the existing system, if you will. But in many, many cases it is.” [SAOT] will speed up the offside process since we don’t have to place those lines. The software does that for us. We look forward to using this to speed up the game.
“Semi-automatic suggests to us where the offside line is, but we still have to check the kick point – make sure the computer has picked the right one, make sure it has picked the right players because we have to identify who the defender is.” Make sure the correct players are identified. And it’s actually just a confirmation of what the computer suggests to us.
“There is no clue [from SAOT] They still have to tell the on-field referees whether a player is offside or not. This could be something that comes over time where they get some information in real time, which will prevent flags from lagging. But that’s still a long way off.
“But we keep a very close eye on everything that makes us more precise and efficient and that benefits the game in a way that we think VAR as a whole has managed to do over the last four to five years.”