Former England striker Gary Lineker has hailed the VAR for failing to award Neymar a penalty in Brazil’s 2-0 win over Costa Rica on Friday.
Second-half goals from Philippe Coutinho and Neymar gave Brazil their first win of the group stage after an opening round draw with Switzerland.
However, before Coutinho broke the deadlock in stoppage time, Brazil were denied a penalty when Neymar threw himself to the ground after some slight contact from Costa Rican defender Giancarlo González.
Referee Bjorn Kuipers went to review the challenge and determined that no foul had occurred and that Costa Rica should be awarded a free-kick.
Lineker and many other hailed VAR for the decision with Lineker writing on his official Twitter account:
“VAR gets it 100% right. Neymar dived and justice was done. That’s exactly what VAR is for.”
VAR gets it 100% right. Neymar dived and justice was done. That’s exactly what VAR is for.
— Gary Lineker (@GaryLineker) June 22, 2018
Best use of VAR, EVER
— Raphael Honigstein💙 (@honigstein) June 22, 2018
VAR doesn't get it right or wrong. The referee does. It's just a tool. It'll be like always – some decisions will still be wrong due to human error. But it adds to the pageantry. I want tears. I want intrigue. I want fights!
— Nooruddean (@BeardedGenius) June 22, 2018
It makes no sense for people to discount VAR because “many decisions are still subjective". They’re missing the whole point. It’s there to avoid major footballing miscarriages of justice. #handofgod
— Jacqui Oatley (@JacquiOatley) June 22, 2018
Well done Kuipers. Well done, VAR
Not even close to be a penalty
— Jan Aage Fjørtoft 🇳🇴 (@JanAageFjortoft) June 22, 2018
https://twitter.com/Kloppholic/status/1010156396959191041
Former Premier League referee Mike Riley hopes the introduction of a video assistant referee will go a long way to helping slash officials’ mistakes.
Riley said: “The biggest challenge is understanding that this isn’t about making the game 100 per cent perfect.
“It is to address and reduce clear and obvious errors. We don’t want this to sanitise the game or for it to be stopping every two minutes while everyone stands around and gets frustrated.
“The select group of referees get 96 per cent of decisions right, so four per cent wrong.
“We don’t want errors in the game and if this improves it by two per cent then the game has improved. That would be two per cent less decisions for people to get agitated about.
“That is good for the game — as long as we don’t increase interference, because we want to the game to flow.”
