UEFA: To ensure consistency of European football referees in European competitions, VAR courses will be held

September 16th News Recently, UEFA announced on its official website that a special VAR course will be held to ensure the consistency of European football referees in UEFA's top competitions.

On Monday, we reiterated our commitment to this evolving theme, welcoming more than 160 elite VAR experts, some in person to UEFA headquarters and some online – taking a special course to prepare for the upcoming new season.

The event marks an important milestone as we strive to achieve complete consistency in UEFA and throughout the European domestic competition and clarify expectations for VAR in the Champions League phase starting on Tuesday. UEFA referee director Rossetti said: "This course is very important to us. Every referee and VAR is very important to this project. It is very good to be able to get together to share video clips and reminders."

"We hope that every game will end with the right result and the right intervention. We still want the referee to make decisions on the court, but the importance of the VAR staff is also very obvious and extremely important to UEFA competition. We have always said that we have the best referees in the world, and I am 100% sure we have the best VAR as well."

course content covers offside procedures, high difficulty challenge assessments, and objective criteria identification in decision-making, emphasizing the importance of consistency and coordination. The courses were hosted by Rossetti, UEFA referee Carlos Basco and VAR expert Pavel Jill.

Some senior officials also shared their insights with colleagues. The 45-year-old German Bastian Danket, one of the most experienced and accomplished VARs in European football, recognizes the clear value of coordination and consistency.

Danket continued: "A course like this is very important because we have a lot of different referees from associations across Europe, and we need to have a clear standard to clarify what expectations are."

"VAR is very helpful for football, and it is very good to introduce technology into UEFA games, we started with a good starting point, and seven or eight years later, we did a great job, but it is still helpful to see what happened in different matches and discuss and clarify the process we should follow."

The course follows the first European Football VAR workshop in Lisbon this April, where the main figures and experts evaluate the impact of technology on referees and the challenges they face.

46 of our 55 member states have been used in their domestic leagues or announced that they will adopt VAR, which strengthens the consistent need for how and when technology is applied to make decisions throughout the game and how best to communicate this to fans and broadcasters.

Since the event, we have compiled best practice options from across the European League and competitions and will be shared with associations in the coming months to help them optimize their implementation.