Fans will be allowed to listen to VAR discussions during Club World Cup

Whatever you may think of how VAR has affected the game, one obvious area for improvement has always been the way decisions are communicated. For the most part, all fans are shown is the final result with no official explanation of why a decision was made — or in some cases, even what was being reviewed.

IFAB, the governing body that oversees the laws of the game, announced on Wednesday that it is looking for ways to address that over the next year.

The first of those tests will be conducted at the Club World Cup when communication between the referee and video assistant will be shared both in the stadium and to broadcast viewers.

This is similar to what rugby already does and a change I’ve been asking to see almost from the moment VAR first debuted in MLS. While it’s possible that this will lead to some embarrassment, I tend to think that creating more transparency is the single biggest need in the current system. Achieving perfection is literally impossible, but we can at least aspire to get to the point where we trust the process. Sharing communications is absolutely key to achieving that sort of trust.