The Call That Is Never Made: VAR's Silent Honesty in a Referee's Notebook

Hook

June 16, 2026, Kazan Arena. France against Australia, the 58th minute. Referee Andrés Cunha is walking toward the small monitor at the side of the pitch — a walk I recognise, a walk I have taken myself, hundreds of times. Sixty thousand people in the stands are shouting 'Penalty.' Cunha returns and points to the spot. The first VAR-awarded penalty in World Cup history — Josh Risdon's hand, Antoine Griezmann's leg.

But my notebook holds another line from that night, one nobody reads. It records exactly what evidence was missing when Cunha declined to give a penalty for six earlier handball appeals. Six times the crowd screamed; six times he shook his head. Those who only count decisions dismiss those six as 'nothing.' Yet the hardest part of a referee's work lives inside those six moments — the ones where he did nothing at all.

Context

I launched the video column 'Referee's Eye' in Khulna in 2026, after eighteen years as a referee commentator. That year I reviewed sixteen matches from the FIFA Confederations Cup, including the final, Chile 0–1 Germany, refereed by Milorad Mažić. My notebook recorded 42 yellow cards, 3 red cards and 5 penalties. In every episode I wrote three things first — the minute, the Law, the decision — and only then spoke. I turned down live streaming for three months, and later published 24 episodes.

That notebook became my foundation. For the 2026 World Cup I built a VAR database from all 64 matches: 29 penalties, 12 own goals, 29 VAR reviews. I published no instant reactions. I watched every controversial incident three times, then cross-checked it against my 2026 Confederations Cup file. This method exposed how often broadcast commentary skips the exact wording of Law 12.

Before publishing any decision I waited twenty-four hours. At first this felt like laziness; later it proved to be my strongest tool. Overnight excitement cools by morning, and a cool head verifies more easily.

The notebook is not a diary of a single match. It is an open ledger — each decision carrying its time, its Law and its evidence beside it, verifiable by anyone who cares to check. The database does not shout; it waits for you to ask the right question. People now use a word for this — blockchain. What they mean is a record that cannot be altered after the fact, where every entry is chained to the one before. My referee's notebook is, in that sense, a blockchain.

Let me be clear. I am not drawing this comparison for effect. The core ideas of blockchain — verifiability, immutability, consensus — have lived inside refereeing for forty years. The difference is only this: technology turned it into a system, while a referee carries it in a notebook and in memory.

Core

Imagine Cunha had asked me before deciding: 'Is this hand a penalty?' I would not have answered from the shouts in the air. I would have answered from the notebook. I would have checked what the 2026 file said about handball, where the hand sat on the body, how far the ball travelled, and what the tempo of the match was.

Every line in my notebook behaves like a ledger entry. A 2026 Confederations Cup decision chains to a 2026 World Cup decision. A new decision never stands alone — it is verified against the ones before it. That act of cross-checking is the whole point. I went back to the 2026 frames to see what the naked eye missed.

In ledger terms, each decision is a block. Each block holds three things — time (the minute), rule (the Law), and verification (how many saw the same). Without all three, the block is invalid. Cunha's decision that night was valid because all three were written beside it. The six earlier 'no' calls were valid too, because there was no evidence at all. An empty block cannot be mined; an unproven decision cannot be given.

This is where my strongest objection begins. The media wrote that night that 'Cunha finally made the right call.' That sentence hides an error. He did not decide 'finally' — he decided because the evidence arrived. For the first six, there was no evidence, so he did nothing. Those who call the first six 'referee weakness' have not understood the job. Doing nothing here is not weakness; it is part of the work.

Law 12 matters here. On handball, the Law asks how the ball met the hand, whether the hand was away from the body, and what the distance was. The word 'proof' is not in the Law, but the word 'clear' is. The VAR protocol carries 'clear and obvious error.' Where clarity is absent, VAR does not intervene. Across all 29 reviews in 2026 I applied that clarity test. In many reviews VAR 'did not intervene' — and that non-intervention taught me the most.

One number tells its own story. Many of the 29 penalties came from incidents nobody would previously have called a penalty. VAR did not multiply penalties; it multiplied viewing angles. For the same reason, it said 'no' to many possible penalties. The same hand, the same ball — but change the angle and the decision changes.

One example. In 2026 I logged an incident where the ball clearly touched a hand — yet VAR gave no penalty. Why? The ball arrived so close that the player had no time to react. In the Law's language, that is the impossibility of avoiding it. Television replays miss this subtlety because they slow the action down. In real time that distance was a fraction of a second. Slow it down and every hand looks guilty — that is the biggest trap of all.

So I kept two calculations for every review — the real-time reading and the slow-motion reading. Only when the two agreed did I feel certain. When they did not, I wrote 'no clarity.' My notebook holds many such lines, and those are my most honest entries.

Now Khulna. In Khulna I learned that a new feed can change the old rules. In 2026, when the local Khulna broadcast added one extra camera angle, a few decisions suddenly looked 'wrong' that had previously looked 'right.' The decision had not changed; the viewing angle had. That is VAR's real power — it does not change decisions, it adds angles.

A warning is necessary here, and it is aimed at my own notebook. A notebook carries a danger: people assume the old decision is the eternal rule. My experience says otherwise. Evidence can stay the same while context shifts. That new Khulna feed taught me that an old block is not a permanent benchmark for a new block. Every time, I must write down what changed and what stayed the same. A notebook that forgets this line becomes a closed room.

One more thing I noticed. That walk to the monitor — from pitch to screen and back — is not merely physical. In that short walk a referee gains the chance to step away from his first decision. A referee who rushes back and clings to his original call never lets VAR work. I trust the replay, the rulebook, and the long walk to the monitor.

Contrarian

The crowd wants a decision; the rules ask the referee to stay restrained. That tension is football's oldest story. But today's environment adds a new pressure: everyone wants every incident converted into a decision. Nobody wants to hear 'no evidence.' That pressure breeds the most dangerous habit — reaction-based officiating.

Imagine a notebook that adds a new block every time it hears a shout. It stops being a notebook. It becomes a mirror of public opinion. And a mirror of public opinion holds no history — only the latest emotion. If a referee decides on the crowd's noise every time, where is the Law? The Law comes precisely from the courage to stand outside that noise.

This pressure has another form — the commentator's pressure. I was a commentator myself, so I know how hard it is to sit before a microphone and say 'no evidence.' The audience wants a firm answer. But firm and correct are not the same thing.

I say the hardest decision is not the penalty. The hardest decision is standing up for the call that is never made. When the crowd says penalty, I look for the angle the crowd cannot see. That habit has kept me from error. The day I lose it, the value of my notebook ends too.

Takeaway

VAR's future depends on answering one question: will it show only the decision, or also the reason? I want the second. If the minute, the Law and the evidence are published beside every VAR decision, a bridge will form between spectator and referee. Public opinion will stop pressing on the decision and start understanding its logic. The call that is never made is still a decision — and the courage to explain it is the real test facing the next generation of referees.