[Saba Sports News] According to Spanish media reports, the La Liga season has entered its decisive phase, and VAR controversies have flared up once again. Disputed decisions in the match between Rayo Vallecano and Real Sociedad have reignited widespread questions over how the Video Assistant Referee is being applied. Senior officials at the Spanish Football Federation have instructed the Referee Technical Committee to clarify that the on-field referee must remain the ultimate authority, and that VAR must not intervene in borderline or ambiguous calls. At the start of the season, La Liga, the Spanish Football Federation and the new refereeing leadership reached an agreement to scale back VAR involvement and return to the core principle of “minimal intervention”, limiting reviews only to clear, obvious and undeniable errors or missed decisions. However, in recent rounds of league fixtures, VAR has slipped back into over-interference. The clash between Rayo Vallecano and Real Sociedad serves as a typical example: VAR stepped in to penalise a minor foul inside the penalty area, ruling out a goal scored by Rayo Vallecano. Former international referee Eduardo Iturralde stated bluntly on Spanish National Radio: “This incident should never have been reviewed by VAR at all.”
The editor believes that many people, even senior officials within the Spanish Football Federation, fail to understand why VAR has stepped back into ambiguous grey areas that were supposed to be avoided. At present, the Spanish Football Federation is highly dissatisfied with the application of VAR in several matches, demanding immediate rectification and a return to the original established guidelines for its use.