Sporting says it has been harmed and calls for ‘urgent standardization’ of video referee criteria

Sporting on Tuesday called for urgent standardization of video referee (VAR) criteria in football, saying it was important to ensure only specialists were in the position.

“VAR is an important tool for greater fairness and transparency in competitions. Anyone who does not defend VAR is not defending the search for sporting truth. Sporting therefore calls for urgent uniformity and understanding of the VAR protocol on the part of referees. The judges win, the clubs win, sports truth wins,” the statement said.

The Lions claim that in the meetings with Vitoria Guimarães (2-3) and Porto (2-0) “it was very obvious how the VAR took the opposite criteria”, given that “in both matches it was Sporting.” was a leader.” Suffered”.

“Sporting’s critique of the arbitration criteria depends on the urgency of their definition and the transparency of decisions. There is no point in adopting one intervention criterion one week and another the next,” the club said.

Thus, Sporting “also considers it important to move towards the use of specialized and exclusive VAR referees”, although they admit that “the current number of referees does not allow this to be done at the moment”, ignoring the Board of Arbitration of Portuguese Football. The Federation (FPF) begins to “prepare the future.”

“Sporting recognizes the efforts of the Arbitration Council to improve arbitration and will continue to fight for sports truth. It will never exist without free, independent and qualified arbitration,” it says.

Sporting recalls that it was “alone when it presented a proposal to implement measures that would allow the dissemination of audio recordings and guarantee greater transparency in arbitration and fairness in the competition itself,” demanding that best practices from other countries be adopted.