Pierluigi Collina admits the process has to speed up, but insists VAR “increases the level of excitement” in football rather dampen celebrations.
The former referee is now chief refereeing commissioner for FIFA and spoke at the Festival dello Sport event in Trento.
“Even if it feels like VAR has been around forever, it was only thought up five years ago. In principle, it was meant to be a simple visual aid for the referee.
Pierluigi Collina admits the process has to speed up, but insists VAR “increases the level of excitement” in football rather dampen celebrations.
The former referee is now chief refereeing commissioner for FIFA and spoke at the Festival dello Sport event in Trento.
“Even if it feels like VAR has been around forever, it was only thought up five years ago. In principle, it was meant to be a simple visual aid for the referee.
“One of the biggest problems was in reliability, but the reaction time of the technology has advanced light years. What takes one minute today took five minutes in 2014 during our first tests.
“We are working constantly and the technology we’ll have in five years could be totally different to the one we see now.”
Among the main complaints about VAR is the time it takes to check relatively simple issues, such as offside.
“Of course, nobody likes to wait, but a big step forward would be if we create a programme using artificial intelligence to immediately select at most 20 different camera angles.
“I don’t think VAR kills the excitement of a goal celebration, if anything it increases the level of excitement. You get to celebrate twice, when scoring and when it’s confirmed.”