In every round of Serie A, there are always some referee controversies that emerge from the various matches played every weekend. This time, there were complaints about a missed penalty in favor of Torino in the match against Genoa, when Sanabria was held back by an opponent in the box in the recovery minutes.
In La Gazzetta dello Sport today, the use of VAR Video Assistant Referee is analyzed, and a model of “challenge-based VAR” similar to what is seen today in basketball and volleyball is proposed. The pink paper also recalls the intentions of the federal president Gabriele Gravina, who had written to the IFAB International Football Association Board about studying innovations in football and the applications of technology.
In this sense, it seems that Italy is open to the idea of becoming a country where innovations are tested, such as the “challenge-based VAR” or even other absolute novelties like actual time and the electronic communication system between the coach and captain. These are only hypotheses at the moment, but there might be some changes in the future.
From the regulation point of view, the VAR protocol would naturally need to be expanded, opening up the possibility for teams to directly ask the referee to review a particularly controversial event during a match on a monitor. In this sense, Simone Inzaghi will certainly have thought of the disputed penalty not whistled at Thuram in the derby for a foul by Pavlovic.
