Soccer history will be made on Thursday at the Club World Cup in Japan when referees will be allowed to get help from video replays for the first time.
Video Assistant Referees (VARs) will be permitted to review “match-changing” moments on the broadcast TV feed and relay information to the referee on the field, who still retains the authority to take the make the final judgment.
Since experiments with replays were approved by soccer’s lawmakers in March, they have all been off-line with VARs not allowed to transmit information to referees.
But on the eve of the Club World Cup opener between Japanese side Kashima Antlers and New Zealand’s Auckland City, FIFA said Thursday’s game and the rest of the Club World Cup through December 18 would be used for an “important piece of history.”
It is the latest sign of FIFA belatedly embracing technology, four years after the Club World Cup saw the first use of systems to detect whether the ball has crossed the line for a goal.
“It’s important to remember that we are entering somewhat unchartered territory here, given that we are going live for the first time,” said Marco van Basten, the former Ajax and Milan forward who was hired as FIFA’s chief officer for technical development in September.