From VAR to Decisions: When Technology Exposes the Limits of the Human Eye

In the 2026 World Cup final between France and Croatia, in the 35th minute, referee Nestor Pitana stopped play to review the VAR monitor. His decision after 1 minute 47 seconds—awarding a penalty to France for the ball striking Ivan Perisic's hand—sparked a controversy that continues to this day. But what few people noticed was not whether the ball hit the hand. It was the camera angle. When I analyzed this situation with the viewing-angle database I built in 2026—the year I discovered 12 incorrect offside decisions in the Chinese Super League caused solely by camera placement—I realized something: of the 6 main broadcast cameras, only 1 angle showed Perisic's arm extending in an "unnatural" manner. And that was the exact angle the referee was shown in the VAR room. The question is not whether the ball touched the hand—that is obvious. The real question is: are we searching for justice, or are we merely searching for a better camera angle? Football laws state that VAR should only intervene on "clear and obvious errors." But this term itself is an ambiguous clause. Who defines what is "clear"? Who defines what is "obvious"? In Perisic's case, his arm was in a natural position during a body rotation—but from the single camera angle the referee saw, it looked like a deliberate block. It took me 37 replays of a single incident in the V.League to understand that the human eye is not a measuring stick. Not because the human eye is inferior, but because it is limited by perspective. When you only have one camera angle, you don't see the full picture. You see what the camera allows you to see. This leads me to a critical observation: the space for subjective judgment within VAR is far larger than the public believes. We tend to trust that technology brings absolute objectivity. But in reality, VAR still depends on humans—on which camera angle they choose, on how they interpret "force of impact," on how they understand the "natural position" of an arm during a rotational movement. The empty stadiums of 2026 taught me something else: VAR did not save football, it exposed football. Without spectators, without pressure from 40,000 people, referee decisions were still wrong. Not because referees are incompetent, but because the system is designed to rely on available camera angles—and those angles are never perfect. I find errors not at the center of the pitch, but at the edge of the frame. That is where cameras fail to capture the exact horizontal plane, where the ball and players' feet create optical illusions, where an offside decision wrong by 15 centimeters can change the outcome of an entire match. But perhaps the most concerning issue is not technical. It lies in how we consume football. We want absolute certainty, but football—like life—is never certain. We want technology to resolve every controversy, but technology only reflects what humans design, and humans always have limits. In 29 years of following and analyzing football, I have witnessed hundreds of controversial incidents. I built a database of viewing-angle errors, measured every millimeter, analyzed every frame. And after all that, I realized the most important thing is not finding the right answer, but understanding why we need that answer so desperately. Perhaps it is time we stop asking "Was VAR correct?" and start asking "Are we placing too much expectation on a tool that only reflects what camera angles permit?" Because ultimately, VAR is not the answer to all of football's problems. It is merely a mirror—and that mirror reflects our own limitations. When I review the 2026 World Cup final with my database, I no longer see a right or wrong decision. I see a system trying to find perfection in an imperfect world. And perhaps that is the greatest lesson modern football teaches us: not everything can be measured, and not every decision can be explained by a perfect camera angle.