Football
ESPN staff 9y

Video assistance for referees 'an inevitability,' says Dutch FA official

The Dutch Football Association (KNVB) has been testing the use of video to aid referees during matches.

The Times newspaper was given access to the process which has been experimented with over an 18-month period.

And Gijs de Jong, operations director of the KNVB, has said it is "an inevitability" that video refereeing will be used in football in the future.

The process that is on trial involves a senior referee operating as the video assistant, whose role is to aid the referee's decision making.

The Times outlines the role is "limited to advice on key decisions -- red-card incidents, penalties and goalscoring opportunities -- within 15 seconds of them taking place."

Goal-line technology is already being used in the Premier League, while Serie A and the Bundesliga are to implement the system that relieves pressure on referees and linesmen getting such decisions wrong from next season.

The use of video for in-play decisions, however, has often been a contentious issue, amid concerns of halting the flow of matches and undermining the referee.

However, Raymond van Meenen, the project leader and a former referee, has said: "The way the protocol works, we are talking about only a few incidents per game on average.

"But it is those two or three decisions that can change the game. At the moment, the referee makes around 95 percent correct decisions in a match. Our goal is to make that 97 percent. But in that two percent you have the decisions everyone talks about.

"The referee can ask for help like he already does from his assistants -- 'I have a bad angle, did you see that?'

"But it is important he does not lie back and wait for the video to intervene. That's not refereeing, not what we want."

The KNVB is keen to experiment with the system in up to 25 matches in the Dutch Cup next season, and De Jong added: "The biggest thing for us was simply saying, 'Right, let's make a start.'"

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