This piece was published in the September 2026 print edition of Roar News.
Croatia thought they had done it. Deep into stoppage time against Portugal, Joško Gvardiol hammered the ball into the net, equalising and rescuing his country from elimination. Fans erupted. A World Cup comeback for the history books. Then came the heart-sinking moment: the referee touched his earpiece and walked to the pitch-side monitor. In seconds, the goal was gone, and with it, the hopes of a nation. The reason? A slight touch of Igor Matanović’s hair on the ball, enough to make the assist offside. Croatia was out.
The offside rule claimed another victim and the uproar of fans spoke volumes. It wasn’t just the contentious nature of the call. In the words of Croatia’s revered manager Zlatko Dalić, “emotions [had] literally been killed.” That captures something much bigger about football’s future. In a game this human, rewarding those special moments of creative magic and teamwork, what are we willing to sacrifice for perfect officiating?
FIFA introduced VAR (Video Assistant Referee) in 2018 to correct ‘clear and obvious’ refereeing errors, as per its official stipulations. But perhaps we’ve taken it too far. Technology guides and corrects us everywhere in life, yet no intervention feels as unsettling as the one on a football pitch. Why? Football is not a system or tool to be optimised. It is culture. The World Cup is a rare and special moment in time where the world unites, diversity is celebrated, and magic is made. We yell, cry, and pray. We feel. It is no wonder why the mechanical decision of VAR feels so far removed from the spirit of the beautiful game. Croatia’s disallowed goal is a powerful symbol of what we lose when we hand human judgement to a machine.
Our first instinct now is to wait. Fans, players, and commentators hesitate as goals are held hostage in a grey area of deliberation before feeling like absolute moments of success. Increasingly, a goal is not celebrated when the ball crosses the line, but when a monitor deems appropriate. Whether Matanović’s hair scraped the ball is a technicality. What we choose to send to VAR is not. It is a far bigger question of where football wants to stand in the age of technology. The game has always been one of imperfection, one we accepted long ago. Why demand robotic perfection from players and referees simply because we have the means to enforce it?
Where errors are genuinely clear and obvious, VAR has earned its place. Frank Lampard’s ghost goal against Germany in the 2010 World Cup remains the clearest case for it. But correcting obvious errors that impose huge margins on the game is very different from deciding a nation’s fate because a strand of hair brushed the ball. Football should not ignore real injustice, but when forensic intervention replaces mere correction, the cure becomes worse than the disease.
VAR can tell us what happened, but not what it meant. It cannot distinguish Lampard’s blatant goal from a hair grazing a ball, not for a lack of accuracy, but a lack of judgement. Humans recognise proportionality. Machines don’t. I would rather live with the odd controversial call from a referee than a series of apathetic ones from a machine.
A final note as I reflect on this World Cup, which I and millions of others look forward to every four years. Why do we watch football? Everyone has that one moment they will remember forever. The last-minute winner. That impossible comeback. Football has never required us to believe in perfection, only to believe. That’s what makes the game beautiful: the possibility that, for one moment, anything can happen. If VAR takes anything from football, I hope it is never that.
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