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Referee Robert Kampka reviews video evidence
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Roland incense / dpa
One press of the button, two sentences into the microphone - and the game continues: what has long been established in American football should also apply to referees in soccer in the future.
Ex-referee Manuel Graefe was not the only one who described the test decided by the international rule guardians as "years overdue" to let the referees speak directly to the spectators in the future.
The plan: After checking the video evidence, referees should explain their decisions to the fans in the stadium and in front of the TV using the headset that is already available.
The International Football Association Board Ifab hopes for more transparency.
The procedure will be tested for the first time at the Club World Cup (from February 1) in Morocco, and use at the Women's World Cup in Australia and New Zealand (from July 20) is also conceivable.
Discussions between the referee and the video assistant remain secret
In the Bundesliga, there will be micro-use in 2024 at the earliest - the test period is limited to one year and the international stage.
If it is successful, it could happen quickly, especially since there have been advocates for a long time.
"If I look at the scene at the edge of the field and tell my colleagues my decision about the headset, I also have to be able to tell the fans in the stadium," Gräfe had said to the "kicker" in 2020.
However, the talks between the referee and the video assistant remain secret, only the result should be briefly explained.
Sports such as ice hockey, baseball and football are already similar.
There, after activating the corresponding function, the referees explain to the fans after evaluating the images which decision is ultimately valid – usually in brief, standardized sentences.
So far it has been different in football, where fans in the stadiums can only find out what has been checked and what the result of the check is from information on the video walls.
It is unclear to what extent a future statement via microphone would go beyond this information.
Because real transparency would probably be created above all by showing TV images on the screen.
Prior to the season, referee boss Jochen Drees had demanded that "the fans in the stadiums see the same pictures as the TV viewers when making VAR decisions".
The visual information is the decisive one.
His comrade-in-arms Lutz Michael Fröhlich recently emphasized that he saw the use of a microphone "as part of the future referee model": "But it has to be more specific, the referees must have trained and practiced it sufficiently before it is introduced in the stadium." The solution with the scoreboard is therefore still favoured.
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