FIFA has revealed what caused a VAR check to be conducted in the World Cup victory of Switzerland over Qatar that saw a penalty awarded to Switzerland. A brief technical issue saw the graphics display become unavailable during a VAR check.
Questions had been asked in the World Cup meeting between Switzerland and Qatar as the animation graphics commonly shown when a VAR offside check was happening failed to materialize prior to a penalty being given.
FIFA have now revealed that there was a brief technical issue that “prevented the onside animation graphic from being generated ahead of the penalty awarded to Switzerland”.
“During the Qatar vs Switzerland match, a brief technical outage prevented the onside animation graphic from being generated ahead of the penalty awarded to Switzerland in the 14th minute. The issue was quickly resolved,” a FIFA statement read.
The Football governing body insists that there were no issues regarding theVARteam’s checks of the action and only the graphic displaying the result of that check on television screens and on the stadium display screens was affected. The process of checking the video still occurred in a standard fashion, with FIFA saying that they looked back at the build-up to the goal before deciding whether it was a penalty.
“The lines used by the VAR to check the position of the relevant players did not show the attacking player to be in an offside position,” the statement confirmed.
