Pierluigi Collina has said he does not want the World Cup to be decided by an incorrect corner decision and would be in favour of using VAR to assist matters during next summer’s tournament.
The former referee, who officiated the 2002 World Cup final, is now chair of Fifa’s referees committee and laid out his support for further technology ahead of Friday’s draw in Washington DC.
Collina explained that discussions on whether VARs could adjudicate on second yellow cards will continue in Wales at next month’s meeting of the International Football Association Board (Ifab), the law-making body.
Further conversations are also to be had over how best to combat time-wasting and there is the possibility of exploring AI-based innovations to help match officials and improve the game, too.
However, Collina’s most notable fear is that a wrongly-awarded corner kick could lead to a decisive goal. Technology could be used to assess whether the ball had fully gone out of play or which team had last touched it.
The viability of such a check would be down to how it delayed the game, which was the basis for Ifab rejecting the proposal at October’s meeting.
The Laws of the Game make it clear that a referee cannot change a restart decision, so if a corner has been taken and play is live, it has to continue. Every corner would therefore have to be checked by VAR.
'Main criteria is no delay'
“We are in a process of discussions,” Collina said. “We should all have the objective to make correct decisions on the field of play.
“It would be a pity if the result of a competition is decided not by what the players do on the field of play but by an honest mistake made by the decision-maker.
“This is what convinced us 13, 14 years ago to start thinking how to support referees [with technology]. So if we can get this, to me, it’s positive.
“The main criteria is no delay. With corners, there is a physiological delay because, when a corner is given, normally you wait until the two centre backs come up.
“It normally takes 10-15 seconds to get the attackers ready. In these 10-15 seconds, if the corner kick is wrongly given, everybody has the evidence that the start of play is wrong.
“To me, it's difficult to understand, if they have the possibility to see that, why we have to hide our heads under the sand and hope that nothing happens on the corner kick which is taken.
“This is my opinion, as I live matches in important competitions hoping the result is determined by what the players do. If I can avoid to have this kind of circumstance, I would be happy. But the main idea – no delay. Nobody wants to introduce any further delay.”
