KNVB officials and critics debate VAR's impact after ten years

Ten years after the introduction of the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) in Dutch professional football, debate continues regarding its impact on the game. KNVB officials, including referee manager Raymond van Meenen and director Gijs de Jong, maintain that the technology has demonstrably reduced errors. Last season, the VAR intervened 105 times, preventing 84 incorrect decisions.

However, critics such as journalist Sjoerd Mossou argue that the system has drifted from its original purpose of correcting ‘clear and obvious mistakes’ to an obsessive search for perfection in subjective areas. Mossou suggests that the high-tech infrastructure used to analyze situations down to the millimeter and nanosecond undermines the human interpretation essential to football.

While the KNVB acknowledges that technology can resolve factual disputes like goal-line decisions, officials emphasize that football remains a game of human error. Van Meenen noted that the rulebook frequently relies on the ‘referee’s judgment,’ and that consensus on what constitutes a ‘clear and obvious’ error remains difficult to achieve.