La Liga: Spanish football federation to introduce Video Assistant Referee technology from 2018-19 season

Madrid: The president of the Spanish football federation expects La Liga to follow Serie A and the Bundesliga by introducing video assistant referee (VAR) technology for the 2018-19 season. “For next season,” Juan Luis Larrea told Spanish radio station Cadena SER when quizzed on when VAR would be introduced. [caption id=“attachment_4153569” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. Getty[/caption] “That is our intention…technology is now coming into football and you have to accept it.” The VAR system — which is used to review goals, red cards, penalties and cases of mistaken identity — has been tested across the world in Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. However, the results of the tests have not been unanimous. In Italy, for example, VAR has not drawn a line under talking points, but added to the controversy. “It will become like baseball in the United States, we stay 10 hours at the stadium eating peanuts,” joked Juventus coach Massimiliano Allegri. Legendary Italian goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon also slammed VAR as “making the game ugly” for the frequency with which matches are disrupted to review decisions. Larrea insisted that tests would be run in “over 70 matches” in Spain before the system is formally introduced. La Liga is the only one of Europe’s top five leagues to not even have goal-line technology, with league president Javier Tebas blaming the cost of introducing the system across the 20 top-flight grounds.