VAR in the V-League: The Technology Arrived, the System Stayed Behind

In the summer of 2026, inside a London studio, I mispronounced the name Ivan Rakitić three times in under a minute. Nobody on the crew reacted immediately. At the end of the shift, a young editor quietly slid a note across to me. That night I went home, pulled up the tape of Croatia against Denmark in the round of 16, and spent nearly a month afterwards counting every pass from Croatia's midfield. Luka Modrić, Ivan Rakitić and Marcelo Brozović completed 89% of their passes in the knockout rounds. I sat down and wrote a piece arguing against myself.

I once got the 2026 World Cup badly wrong. And that was the most expensive lesson I own.

The error that day was not one of knowledge. I knew Croatia were strong. The error was believing I had prepared enough, and that preparing enough would automatically shield me from every mistake. Vietnamese football walked down a strikingly similar road when the V-League introduced VAR from the 2026 season: the belief that simply bringing the technology in would dissolve every argument.

People call me reckless, but numbers have never learned how to lie.

Three years later, the numbers said something quite different.

The 2026 World Cup in Russia was the first finals to use VAR. The tournament closed with 29 penalties awarded, the highest figure in the history of the finals up to that point. The reason was not that players fouled more. The reason was that, for the first time, a second eye could see what the human eye had missed.

Emotionally, the consequence was stranger than that. When the referee was the sole judge, fans knew exactly who they were allowed to be angry with. With VAR, they have to wait. And waiting, in football, is a very particular form of torture.

Vietnamese football moved through the 2026–2026 stretch along a jagged emotional line. In 2026, the U23 side reached an Asian final and the senior team won the AFF Cup. In 2026, Kim Sang-sik's side won the ASEAN Championship, beating Thailand 5-3 on aggregate, with Nguyễn Xuân Son scoring seven goals to take the golden boot before suffering a broken leg in the second leg at Việt Trì. Then came 2026 World Cup qualifying, where the national team exited at the second round, finishing behind Iraq and Indonesia in Group F.

Placed side by side, those three facts say something very clear: Vietnam has learned how to win big matches, but has not learned how to run a big system.

The V-League brought VAR in from 2026, on a phased schedule. Some stadiums were equipped, others were not. The number of cameras at each match differs. Referees received extra training, but their experience of officiating at international level remains thin. And there is no public audio channel for the exchange between the on-field referee and the VAR room — something fans of major leagues now take for granted.

Here, I have to say something plainly that nobody wants to hear.

The problem with VAR in the V-League lies elsewhere: a league applying different rules at different stadiums, and calling that fairness.

Picture it concretely. A team plays at a stadium fitted with a full VAR setup, seven camera angles and a fully staffed VAR room. The following week, the same team travels to a ground with only three angles, where the referee must decide alone on situations that, at home, would have been supported. Those are two rulebooks for one league. The final table is still decided by points, but those points are accumulated under conditions that are not equivalent.

Based on my experience watching these matches, the biggest controversies do not come from incidents VAR judges wrongly. They come from incidents VAR cannot touch, because the ground lacks the equipment, or because the camera angle cannot settle the question. That is the most dangerous kind of controversy, because it has no answer. Fans cannot be persuaded by a frame that does not exist.

This is the point at which we must talk about time.

My problem with VAR is not that it exists. It is that reviews run so long they shred the rhythm of a match. When a goal hangs in the air for two full minutes, the emotion in the stands does not pause to wait. It cools. And when emotion cools, football loses the very thing that gives it value.

But here is where I want to speak for the people who referee: lengthy reviews are not their preferred choice. They are the direct consequence of missing equipment, missing angles and missing protocol. Referees take longer because they are trying to verify a situation the system has not given them the tools to verify.

Put differently, waiting time in VAR is a diagnostic indicator, not a disease. It measures the distance between ambition and infrastructure.

Cost is the part nobody can skip. A VAR system at one stadium involves dedicated camera rigs, transmission lines, an operations room and staff across an entire season. For a league whose broadcast revenue remains modest, equipping every ground at once is not achievable within a single season. That explains why the rollout was phased. It does not explain why a match with VAR and a match without VAR are counted into the same table.

There is one more dimension rarely discussed: home advantage. During the pandemic, when stadiums stood empty, data across Europe showed home advantage falling sharply. Crowds exert real influence, and that influence includes pressure on referees. Home advantage is dead — at least in its loud, naked form. In the V-League, where stands remain full and the pressure remains heavy, VAR is the only instrument capable of separating the referee from the noise. If VAR operates at only half the grounds, it protects referees in only half the matches.

And here is the data point I want readers to hold on to. The 29 penalties at the 2026 World Cup do not prove football became more violent. They prove that when you install a new standard of verification into a system, the system adjusts itself. The issue for a league is not how many errors get detected. The issue is whether detection is consistent.

Data does not kill emotion. It gives emotion a frame.

Now comes the part where I might be wrong.

In 2026, at 56, I published on my personal blog a prediction many people laughed at: that Mohamed Salah, Roberto Firmino and Sadio Mane would score at least 84 goals in all competitions for Liverpool. By the end of 2026-18, they had scored 91. Salah 44, Firmino 27, Mane 20. The number 91 was not a lucky figure; it was the destination of a plan. I was right, and I was mocked before I was right.

I saw something in them before the rest of the world turned its head. But that story taught me something else too: being right once does not mean being right every time.

So where might I be wrong about VAR?

First, I am applying European league standards to a competition with very different resources. A complete VAR system at every ground demands equipment costs, operating costs and training costs that a Southeast Asian league may not be able to absorb in the short term. A phased rollout may be the correct choice, not the wrong one.

Second, I may be underestimating fan patience. Viewers may well accept a two-minute wait if the final outcome is correct. What they will not accept is ambiguity: not knowing what is being reviewed, who is deciding, and why. If that is the case, the solution lies not in equipment but in communication.

Third, and this is the possibility I weigh most seriously: perhaps VAR in the V-League has not failed. Three years is far too short a window to draw conclusions about a systemic change. I was once laughed at for daring to publish the number 84. I have also been wrong for mispronouncing the name of a player I should have known. Both times taught me the same thing: a conclusion must come with a deadline, and the deadline must be respected.

So what am I betting on?

If by the end of the 2026-27 season the V-League still lacks a unified VAR standard across every ground, then every refereeing controversy will be nothing more than a symptom of a larger problem: a league that wants to be judged as a professional football environment while still operating under multiple parallel rulebooks.

Football waits for no one. It waits only for those willing to ask questions.

And what I leave with readers today goes beyond a verdict on whether VAR is right or wrong. There is a different question: if fairness is guaranteed at only half the grounds, are we playing one league — or two leagues wearing a single name?