UEFA VAR Symposium: Listening, learning and leveraging technology for football’s future
Tuesday, April 29, 2025
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From UEFA, IFAB and FIFA to national associations, coaches, referees, players and fans, we look at who said what about VAR’s impact on the game and the challenges to overcome.
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Over 100 representatives of the European football community attended UEFA’s first-ever VAR symposium this week to take stock of what one speaker described as "the biggest change in football in more than a century".
Despite measurably improving the accuracy of refereeing decisions, VAR continues to be a talking point for fans, players and pundits.
"Our main target was to listen to everybody, to give them the possibility to share their knowledge and to work together. It was a great success that we will continue."
Over two days at the Portuguese Football Federation's City of Football HQ in Lisbon, experts from across the footballing landscape discussed how to optimise a technology now deployed by the majority of European associations, in particular, by explaining game-changing decisions to fans.
Voices from the symposium
"VAR is a necessary and logical support for the referee. It is crucial to correct clear mistakes, detect serious missed incidents and improve the safety of the players."
Gijs de Jong, General Secretary of the Royal Dutch Football Federation (KNVB), pioneers of VAR in Europe
"I think our life is easier now because we can avoid the big mistakes. It’s comfortable to go to the stadium knowing that we will have some support on crucial decisions."
Stéphanie Frappart, FIFA international referee and the first woman to officiate a UEFA Champions League match
Did you know?
Before VAR’s use in UEFA competitions, on average, referees made a "game-changing" mistake once in every 2.4 matches. Today, it's once in every 16 matches.
"Since the introduction of VAR, the behaviour of players has changed completely, especially inside the box. Holding shirts, pushing opponents, we know now that there are lots of cameras catching everything. We know football is a little bit fairer."
André Martins, former Portugal international
"Football is fairer now. The Champions League final won’t be decided by a refereeing mistake. It’s also safer for players with fewer serious fouls and off-the-ball violence.These are two major areas that we need to keep reminding people."
David Elleray, Technical Director, International Football Association Board (IFAB), guardians of the Laws of the Game
"There is no question that VAR is accepted as an integral part of the game, protecting football on the big decisions. Whenever we don’t have VAR, I feel that we are missing it."
Roberto Martínez, Portugal men’s national team coach
"Referees must be able to make decisions in a safe and healthy environment and VAR contributes to this."
Ronan Evain, Executive Director, Football Supporters Europe (FSE)
"We all need to be clear what VAR is for. It has limited scope. There are those who thought VAR would remove all discussions. Unfortunately, no. Some incidents are factual, but many things are subjective. The vast majority of decisions in football are the ones that the referee should see and decide on the pitch."
Giorgio Marchetti, Deputy General Secretary, UEFA
"We need to use it better … We want consistency. There are many situations where it is subjective. We should empower the referee to manage the game, that’s where we should all push."
Roberto Martínez
"We watch some referees waiting for VAR to whistle because they are not sure. If you are waiting all the time, [players] start to lose confidence in the referee. You must have the courage to whistle even if you make mistakes."
André Martins
"What happened when we introduced the instant replay system 25 years ago? The referees stopped making decisions. We are pushing referees to make the decisions themselves all the time, because otherwise we need the replay more and more. We are investing in training referees not to review."
Carl Jungebrand, Head of Refereeing at the Federation of International Basketball Associations (FIBA)
"VAR represents the biggest change that football has seen for more than a century, but the real benefits are not communicated. Communications is the one place where we failed. We were so focused on getting the protocol and technology right that the explanation of what VAR is about got lost.
"The football world needs to be told how VAR works, what it can and cannot be used for, and be reminded clearly that it produces a game which is very much fairer and safer than it was in the pre-VAR times."
David Elleray, IFAB
"We should explain to the public how the process works. If you don’t explain what happened, you get a lot of opposition. We should be confident, not be too defensive, [because] we have the evidence."
Gijs de Jong, KNVB
"The most difficult thing is not to explain why VAR intervenes, but why in certain cases it does not."
Giorgio Marchetti, UEFA
"I love to see the ref explaining what was checked, why they made their decision. It’s more the times when VAR didn’t intervene that is the hard part. We need to explain to the players and the coaches why VAR did not step in."
André Martins
"Explaining the decision on the field is better than explaining after the match."
Stéphanie Frappart, FIFA international referee
"Transparency and integrity of the VAR decisions is important. Trying to ensure that we are consistent with our messaging will gain more trust in VAR."
Martin Atkinson, VAR manager, Scottish Football Association
"The main problem for fans is understanding why VAR is used or not. Referees should speak to the public in the stadium. That is why referees need to use a common vocabulary."
Fabio Caressa, journalist and broadcaster, Sky Italia
"If governing bodies do not explain decisions after the game, then who does? Sometimes we need to own the decision to explain them better."
Ronan Evain, FSE
"Consistency is key. It was a key step to employ our own VAR operators, so they are part of the team and we create consistency."
Hendrik Weber, SVP Sports Technology & Innovation, Deutsche Fussball Liga (DFL) Group
"In-stadium public announcements are a safe step towards communicating transparently and effectively the reason for the decision after a review."
Hugo Miguel, coach and committee member, Portuguese Football Federation
"Be proactive, not reactive, keeping all stakeholders informed via the use of technology and information systems. We’re not just informing. We’re educating, contextualising and bringing people on a journey with us."
Oliver Kohout & Megan Rumsey, Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL), the body responsible for refereeing professional matches in England
"Refereeing matters should be addressed through independent channels. These issues should be discussed on dedicated websites or independent platforms, not through mainstream media or during talk shows featuring former players and coaches."
Gianluca Rocchi, Head of Serie A & B Refereeing Committee
"We show everything that the referee sees, including the audio of when the referees are talking. We have nothing to hide. We have received positive feedback from the audience. They don’t understand everything, but they have the feeling that it is very transparent."
Carl Jungebrand, Head of Refereeing, FIBA
"Everything is live on TV and in the stadium, so everyone can listen to the umpire work through the process. If this is communicated well enough, everyone should know what the umpire is going to decide. Consistency has really built trust."
Sean Easey, Senior Manager, Umpires & Referees, International Cricket Council (ICC)
"How can the fan understand the world of VAR? Perhaps by going back to history to understand how we implement VAR, how it works, and the benefits for football."
Stéphanie Frappart, FIFA international referee
"The VAR trials for match-changing incidents started in 2016 with the expectation that they would not work and the debate about using replays would stop. Unexpectedly, the VAR protocol was a great success and less than two years later was used successfully in the World Cup."
David Elleray, IFAB
"In 2011, we created an internal working group with representatives of refereeing, disciplinary, legal, communications, the coaches’ union, players and clubs. Other associations like the DFB [German Football Association] and FIGC [Italian Football Federation] helped us lobby to convince IFAB and FIFA."
Gijs de Jong, KNVB
"Using artificial intelligence, we can improve the image quality to help turn subjectivity to objectivity. Making decisions faster and better with less manual work is an area where technology can help."
Olivier Barnich, Head of Innovation and Architecture, EVS
"We see a path towards automating as many objective decisions as possible, allowing referees and officials to focus on the subjective. We have so much data and video content now, that we can start to potentially use AI to start to assist decisions."
Tony Page, Managing Director of Football, Hawk-Eye Innovations
"We want to find ways of making technology more affordable to give everybody the opportunity to use it. If we can reduce the cameras needed to get the data that everyone needs, it brings the cost down massively. We are working with universities to see how we can achieve similar results just by using a single camera."
Sebastian Runge, Head of Football Technology and Data, FIFA
"We believe that every country should be developing their technology systems. We cannot guarantee the same level of stadium infrastructure or support for each match or competition … but we are on a very good path."
Alessandro Arduino, Football Technologies Manager, UEFA