Myth: VAR is slow and kills the game’s flow.
It’s the most common complaint: a great passage of play is halted for a painfully long review, killing momentum. It’s true that some reviews feel like they take an eternity. However, FIFA's data from the 2022 Men's World Cup showed the average VAR review took 75.5 seconds. While that can feel long in the moment, it’s comparable to other common stoppages, like a lengthy injury treatment or a double substitution. The bigger picture is that this time is usually added on at the end of the half, resulting in the lengthy stoppage time periods we've become accustomed to. The argument isn't really about lost time, but about disrupted rhythm. The trade-off is clear: a brief pause for a potentially game-changing correction. For organizers, it's a price
worth paying to avoid a repeat of infamous errors like Maradona's 'Hand of God'.
Myth: VAR is just as wrong as the human referee.
Frustration with a controversial VAR decision can make it feel like the system is pointless. We see a call go against our team and scream, “What were they even looking at?!” But the data paints a very different picture. The official protocol for VAR is to correct “clear and obvious errors.” It isn't there to re-referee the entire match. According to FIFA, referees made the correct call in 95.6% of incidents during the 2018 Men's World Cup. With the help of VAR, that number jumped to an incredible 99.3%. So, while the system isn’t perfect and doesn’t catch every single mistake, it dramatically reduces the number of game-deciding blunders. It turns out that a team of officials with access to multiple camera angles and slow-motion replays is, unsurprisingly, more accurate than one person trying to see everything in real-time.
Myth: VAR has eliminated controversy from soccer.
If only this were true. The initial hope for VAR was that it would end the post-game arguments about blown calls. Instead, it has simply changed the *type* of argument we have. The debate has shifted from “How did the referee miss that?” to “What is the rule?” and “Was that error truly ‘clear and obvious’?” We’ve swapped on-field mistakes for philosophical debates about the offside law (is a player's armpit a legitimate goal-scoring part of the body?) or what constitutes an unnatural handball position. The technology is precise, but the rules it enforces are often subjective. VAR exposes the gray areas in soccer’s rulebook, transforming a missed call into a drawn-out, frame-by-frame analysis that often leaves fans on both sides feeling just as aggrieved as before.
Myth: VAR is ruining the pure joy of a goal celebration.
This is less of a myth and more of an undeniable reality, and it's perhaps the strongest argument against the system. The pure, unadulterated explosion of joy when your team scores is one of soccer’s greatest feelings. VAR has replaced that with a new, more cautious emotion: delayed gratification. Fans and players alike now hesitate, their eyes darting to the referee before they can truly celebrate. A shadow of doubt hangs over every goal. While you might get that joy back 90 seconds later, the initial, spontaneous moment is gone forever. There is no statistic that can measure this loss of passion and soul. This is the core of the debate: proponents will say a correctly decided game is worth the emotional cost, while critics argue that the system has fundamentally broken the most beautiful moment in the sport.
