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African Nations

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With the Gold Cup and AFCON going on, it's almost jarring now to see an international tournament without VAR.
 
As fans we probably moan both ways.

The one missed on Mane should not have needed VAR, the referee and assistant (possibly in perfect position) between them should have got it right.
 
You can't blame the technology for that. Technology is only as good as the person operating it, if a trained referee looks at that and thinking it isn't a penalty he should be thinking about a different profession.
 
You can't blame the technology for that. Technology is only as good as the person operating it, if a trained referee looks at that and thinking it isn't a penalty he should be thinking about a different profession.

Just so everyone is on the same page, they aren't using VAR in the group stages of ACN.
 
We may have one reason for why Cameroon was griping about the officiating at the WWC while playing in the manner they did. If nothing is called on the continent, then it would be a shock to the system to actually have fouls called.......
 
We may have one reason for why Cameroon was griping about the officiating at the WWC while playing in the manner they did. If nothing is called on the continent, then it would be a shock to the system to actually have fouls called.......
Except that the Cameroon women's main and most vehement complaints didn't involve fouls - it was pretty much all about VAR-mediated offside calls going against them. The problem seemed to be that they didn't understand how VAR works and that when it's purely a matter of offside position, the referee doesn't need to conduct an on-field review (OFR).

I was wondering for a moment, whether this might have been an example of where, in the words of the VAR protocol:
... the referee decides that an OFR will assist match control/player management or will help ‘sell’ a decision

However having considered it, I still don't think so. It would set a bad precedent for referees to start reviewing offside position calls simply because of the demands of the players, and giving in to the Cameroon players' demands in that way wouldn't have helped her match control either.
 
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