Weighing in on the effectiveness of football’s video review, a Spanish court has deemed that VAR officials created gross errors during games last season through their partial selection of images for the referee to view.
In a recent court verdict seen by The Associated Press on Friday, a Madrid-based judge cited two incidents from Spanish league games played last season where the images provided by the video assistant led to erroneous decisions by the on-field referee.
The verdict tossed out a lawsuit by a former referee who had sued the Spanish football federation for no longer using him and other colleagues as video assistants during the final two games during the current season.
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The first incident cited by judge Sonia López was during Real Madrid’s visit to Valencia in May when Vinícius Júnior was sent off with a red card for scuffling with Valencia players after the video assistant intervened. The judge says that the video assistant failed to show all the relevant images of the altercation, which included Valencia players acting aggressively toward Vinícius.
Vinícius was racially abused during the match, provoking a scandal that gained worldwide attention.
The Spanish football federation later took the highly unusual decision to annul Vinícius’ red card.
The second incident cited by the judge was from Atletico Madrid’s 3-3 draw at Espanyol also in May when the hosts were in the thick of an ultimately unsuccessful bid to avoid relegation.
The referee initial waived off a late goal by Atletico because he ruled that the ball had not fully crossed the goal-line. The referee overturned that decision and awarded Atletico the equalizer after he was shown an image by the video assistant.
The judge, however, said that there existed other images that the video assistant did not offer to the on-field referee which put in doubt whether the ball fully crossed the line.
The referee who had filed the lawsuit was not involved in either of those two incidents. But the judge included them to support her ruling that the Spanish football federation was justified in no longer employing him and other former video assistants.
The video review has been used in the Spanish league since the 2018-2019 season.
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