{"id":719486,"date":"2026-06-22T16:37:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T16:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/719486\/"},"modified":"2026-06-22T16:37:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T16:37:09","slug":"world-cup-2026-is-var-being-used-differently-to-the-premier-league","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/719486\/","title":{"rendered":"World Cup 2026: Is VAR being used differently to the Premier League?"},"content":{"rendered":"

VAR at the World Cup has not been without its controversies. <\/p>\n

Think of the red card for South Africa’s Themba Zwane for violent conduct in the opening game.<\/p>\n

Or the referee rejecting a penalty review<\/a> after France’s Kylian Mbappe appeared to be tripped by Senegal’s Sadio Mane. <\/p>\n

But for the most part, there have not been too many talking points.<\/p>\n

It is often the way at major tournaments, as players take fewer risks compared to a 38-game league season.<\/p>\n

On average, there is one key match incident (red card, penalty claim etc) in a World Cup fixture. In the Premier League, it is three. That instantly creates the scope for more controversy at league level.<\/p>\n

We should expect refereeing to be the gold standard at the World Cup, too. <\/p>\n

After all, Fifa scoured the globe to select the creme de la creme, the 51 top referees and 30 best video match officials.<\/p>\n

Whisper it, but Pierluigi Collina, Fifa’s head of referees, wants his officials to approach the tournament a bit like a Premier League game.<\/p>\n

Collina’s ethos is that football is a contact sport, and not all contact is a foul. He wants to see free-flowing games at a higher tempo.<\/p>\n

You could pick that wording right out of the Premier League handbook.<\/p>\n

The stats back this up, too. Referees are blowing for far fewer fouls.<\/p>\n

The 2018 World Cup saw 27 fouls per game, while in Qatar four years ago it was 25.<\/p>\n

For this World Cup it is down to 21.7. In the Premier League last season it was 21.6. <\/p>\n

Collina has also reduced the number of cautions per game, with 2.4 well below any other competition or recent World Cup.<\/p>\n

If you change the way a game is being refereed, you must adapt video review too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"VAR at the World Cup has not been without its controversies. Think of the red card for South…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":719487,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-719486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=719486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/719487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=719486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=719486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=719486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}