The World Cup’s Awful Instant Replay System Must Be Destroyed
By Jason Gay
Wall Street Journal
July 8, 2026 9:00 am ET
We need to talk about VAR.
I thought I’d seen the worst of soccer’s contentious video assisted review technology, until Tuesday’s Argentina-Egypt World Cup round of 16 game, when, late in the second half, the baffling, deeply-unpopular replay doohickey was deployed to disallow a glorious, field-crossing, momentum-shifting Mostafa Ziko goal after determining Egypt had fouled Argentina…roughly 100 yards prior.
This wasn’t penalizing something Ziko did. This was like traveling back in time. This was like getting stopped by a SWAT team in Rhode Island and being told you were being ticketed for jaywalking in Oregon. In 1974.
You know what happened next. Ziko would actually score again to give Egypt a 2-0 lead, but defending Cup champion Argentina would storm back with three goals in 13 minutes to take a wild 3-2 comeback victory.
Not surprisingly, Egypt is out of its mind, pointing to other calls and alleging that FIFA and the refs have conspired to get Leo Messi and Argentina through to the final.
“It was a rigged game,” Ziko said. “Congratulations to Argentina on another World Cup, it seems.”
Oof. I have heard this VAR reversal explained by reasonable folks—Ziko’s goal was revoked because the scoring play originally benefited from a foul. While the foul may have been committed on the other end of the field, 15 seconds prior, and wasn’t whistled in real time, Egypt didn’t lose possession after taking the ball, therefore the goal was tainted.
I hear that. I appreciate the polite clarification. I think it’s hooey.
Hooey! I say.
This is my rule with sports replay: If someone is explaining a decision and it makes you scrunch up your face like they are telling you they live inside a walnut tree and talk to all the neighborhood squirrels…it’s a bad call.
Replay should feel rational, attached to reality. Not disconnected from the action it is trying to officiate. Not the kind of thing where you wonder if the review officials are sitting there watching the game or quietly online shopping for linen shorts on J.Crew.
VAR doesn’t feel like a backstop. It’s become a joy denial device. It has been designed by evil robots to rob wonder and suck the soul out of a beautiful game based on constant flow.
This is the part where seasoned soccer watchers shake their heads ruefully. This is the part where the Journal’s premier footy scribes Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg giggle at my stateside naiveté. International fans who have lived with this flaming dumpster of technology have to chuckle at a Jason-come-lately discovering the bane of their existence.
Hahahahaha, they say. Welcome to Life with VAR, you American bozo!
I feel like the inverse of all those social media videos from earlier in the tournament, the foreigners visiting Cheesecake Factory and wondering why Americans eat salads the size of Ford Explorers. VAR is my Cheesecake Factory. I’m incredulous, gobsmacked, and I don’t even get a delicious salad big enough to feed a Texas marching band.
How long can soccer do this to itself? Not a day has gone by in this Cup without a decision that plunges a nation into rage.
Look at the brouhaha over the now-departed U.S. player Folarin Balogun’s red card, which was dubiously handed out after video review, wound up becoming a White House emergency, and was the only thing that saved us from an entire weekend being devoured by Taylor & Travis’s guest list.
I haven’t even gotten to the absurdity of the Croatia-Portugal match, aka the Hair of God, in which officials revoked a game-tying Croatia goal because a sensor in the ball few people knew even existed decided that the ball had grazed the hairline of a Croatia player.
Decisions like this have been the No. 1 thing Journal readers have complained to me about during this World Cup. Actually, that’s not true. The No. 1 thing Journal readers have complained to me about is the Stella Adler-trained flopping, the way players react to lightly brushed toes like they are being pummeled on the Brooklyn waterfront, writhing on the ground, until nobody reacts, and they spring up healthy, as if nothing happened, because nothing did.
VAR is their second-biggest complaint. And while I’d like to blame it as a tic of foreign sports, we have plenty of replay ridiculousness in our house, too.
You all know what I’m talking about. NFL games have replay after replay and you still need tenured MIT scientists to deduce what constitutes a catch. You can slow cook a 20-pound turkey waiting for NBA replay to resolve a contested out-of-bounds play. I can’t believe we have review for balls and strikes. Robot umps are here.
We tell ourselves this stuff should be limited, that replay must only be used for specific situations, but we never limit it. It only expands. The explosion of legal betting has raised the stakes, increased the tantruming over minor infractions and thrown out the useful perspective that sports are games, played and officiated by human beings, and sometimes imperfect, like life.
We’re wrecking our entertainment with granular forensics. We’ve turned the games we love over to zero-tolerance killjoys who would interrupt the Jupiter symphony because they think the oboe player held a note a half second too long. We need to take a lot of this vaunted tech and smash it with a bunch of hammers. I’ll go first.
Everyone hates it, and yet, we’re getting more. It’s like reality television, AI slop, and social media. We’re too hooked to say stop. I’d say we should review how we got here, but I’ve seen enough. I don’t need more review. Bring me my hammer.
Wall Street Journal
July 8, 2026 9:00 am ET
We need to talk about VAR.
I thought I’d seen the worst of soccer’s contentious video assisted review technology, until Tuesday’s Argentina-Egypt World Cup round of 16 game, when, late in the second half, the baffling, deeply-unpopular replay doohickey was deployed to disallow a glorious, field-crossing, momentum-shifting Mostafa Ziko goal after determining Egypt had fouled Argentina…roughly 100 yards prior.
This wasn’t penalizing something Ziko did. This was like traveling back in time. This was like getting stopped by a SWAT team in Rhode Island and being told you were being ticketed for jaywalking in Oregon. In 1974.
You know what happened next. Ziko would actually score again to give Egypt a 2-0 lead, but defending Cup champion Argentina would storm back with three goals in 13 minutes to take a wild 3-2 comeback victory.
Not surprisingly, Egypt is out of its mind, pointing to other calls and alleging that FIFA and the refs have conspired to get Leo Messi and Argentina through to the final.
“It was a rigged game,” Ziko said. “Congratulations to Argentina on another World Cup, it seems.”
Oof. I have heard this VAR reversal explained by reasonable folks—Ziko’s goal was revoked because the scoring play originally benefited from a foul. While the foul may have been committed on the other end of the field, 15 seconds prior, and wasn’t whistled in real time, Egypt didn’t lose possession after taking the ball, therefore the goal was tainted.
I hear that. I appreciate the polite clarification. I think it’s hooey.
Hooey! I say.
This is my rule with sports replay: If someone is explaining a decision and it makes you scrunch up your face like they are telling you they live inside a walnut tree and talk to all the neighborhood squirrels…it’s a bad call.
Replay should feel rational, attached to reality. Not disconnected from the action it is trying to officiate. Not the kind of thing where you wonder if the review officials are sitting there watching the game or quietly online shopping for linen shorts on J.Crew.
VAR doesn’t feel like a backstop. It’s become a joy denial device. It has been designed by evil robots to rob wonder and suck the soul out of a beautiful game based on constant flow.
This is the part where seasoned soccer watchers shake their heads ruefully. This is the part where the Journal’s premier footy scribes Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg giggle at my stateside naiveté. International fans who have lived with this flaming dumpster of technology have to chuckle at a Jason-come-lately discovering the bane of their existence.
Hahahahaha, they say. Welcome to Life with VAR, you American bozo!
I feel like the inverse of all those social media videos from earlier in the tournament, the foreigners visiting Cheesecake Factory and wondering why Americans eat salads the size of Ford Explorers. VAR is my Cheesecake Factory. I’m incredulous, gobsmacked, and I don’t even get a delicious salad big enough to feed a Texas marching band.
How long can soccer do this to itself? Not a day has gone by in this Cup without a decision that plunges a nation into rage.
Look at the brouhaha over the now-departed U.S. player Folarin Balogun’s red card, which was dubiously handed out after video review, wound up becoming a White House emergency, and was the only thing that saved us from an entire weekend being devoured by Taylor & Travis’s guest list.
I haven’t even gotten to the absurdity of the Croatia-Portugal match, aka the Hair of God, in which officials revoked a game-tying Croatia goal because a sensor in the ball few people knew even existed decided that the ball had grazed the hairline of a Croatia player.
Decisions like this have been the No. 1 thing Journal readers have complained to me about during this World Cup. Actually, that’s not true. The No. 1 thing Journal readers have complained to me about is the Stella Adler-trained flopping, the way players react to lightly brushed toes like they are being pummeled on the Brooklyn waterfront, writhing on the ground, until nobody reacts, and they spring up healthy, as if nothing happened, because nothing did.
VAR is their second-biggest complaint. And while I’d like to blame it as a tic of foreign sports, we have plenty of replay ridiculousness in our house, too.
You all know what I’m talking about. NFL games have replay after replay and you still need tenured MIT scientists to deduce what constitutes a catch. You can slow cook a 20-pound turkey waiting for NBA replay to resolve a contested out-of-bounds play. I can’t believe we have review for balls and strikes. Robot umps are here.
We tell ourselves this stuff should be limited, that replay must only be used for specific situations, but we never limit it. It only expands. The explosion of legal betting has raised the stakes, increased the tantruming over minor infractions and thrown out the useful perspective that sports are games, played and officiated by human beings, and sometimes imperfect, like life.
We’re wrecking our entertainment with granular forensics. We’ve turned the games we love over to zero-tolerance killjoys who would interrupt the Jupiter symphony because they think the oboe player held a note a half second too long. We need to take a lot of this vaunted tech and smash it with a bunch of hammers. I’ll go first.
Everyone hates it, and yet, we’re getting more. It’s like reality television, AI slop, and social media. We’re too hooked to say stop. I’d say we should review how we got here, but I’ve seen enough. I don’t need more review. Bring me my hammer.
