VAR chaos: will football turn to cricket to unlock the secrets of referees?

The story is not only about the major decisions that turn the results of matches. On Saturday, Axel Disasi, the Crystal Palace defender on loan from Chelsea, was sent off during his side's 3-2 defeat to Ipswich Town.

Disasi stood at the touchline for more than a minute while VAR reviewed the red card. Everyone waited to learn whether the referee would confirm the decision or reverse it.

Inside Selhurst Park, the fans got no explanation. They don't know what VAR said, what he saw, whether the on-field referee hesitated, or even whether the review concerned the decision itself or some other detail of the incident.

Almost ten years have passed since VAR arrived at the highest levels of football. Yet the fan in the stands still feels like a second-class citizen when it comes to understanding the decisions that decide a match.

The television commentary team holds a unique position in all this. They can hear what VAR says, along with the discussions between the video room and the on-field referee.

That access lets commentators and analysts feed part of the context to viewers at home. The fan in the stadium, meanwhile, is often left staring at a giant screen showing a replay or some graphics, without a word of the dialogue that ultimately settles the call.

One question grows more pressing with every passing year: "Will football one day reach a stage where it trusts the crowds enough to allow them to hear directly what the video technology referees say?".

Other sports have gone further down this road. So why can't football?

Howard Webb took charge of the Premier League's refereeing body in 2022 with a promise of greater transparency and openness within the officiating system. He has taken significant steps down that path.

"Match Officials Mic'd Up", the programme that showcases the exchanges between referees and the video assistant technology, broke new ground among Europe's major leagues.

Nobody should be surprised Webb went this way. He had done it before in the United States, as head of referees in Major League Soccer.

The American league became the first to share audio recordings of the video technology publicly after matches, launching its "Inside VAR" programme in 2019.

That programme was the first version, and it later inspired the "Match Officials Mic'd Up" venture in the Premier League. Moving from disclosing recordings after the match to broadcasting them live during the game, though, was an entirely different story.

Several bodies and leagues have tried to push for live broadcasts of the video technology conversations. Those attempts never reached a final conclusion. A number of leagues and the bodies responsible for setting the laws of the game could not reach a consensus on the step.

Webb sat on a working group that sought to ease the restrictions on the use of audio recordings, paving the way for possible live broadcasts in the future.

The International Football Association Board, the body responsible for enacting the laws of the game, and FIFA in particular, remain far from approving the full disclosure of what takes place within these conversations. The same concerns come up every time anyone raises the idea of amending the regulations.

Communication quality varies across different parts of the world. Referees could face additional pressure during reviews, with a potential impact on their image and credibility. The nature of some video technology decisions makes the matter more complicated still.

Many decisions do not rest on a clear fact that can be easily proven. They rest on personal judgement and interpretation. Two people can watch the same replay a dozen times and still disagree over the call.

Three years ago, Lukas Brud, the secretary and chief executive of the International Football Association Board, spoke to "BBC Sport" about broadcasting audio recordings live. His stance laid bare the depth of concern inside the bodies that run the game.

Opening up those communications to the public live could spark a kind of "chaos", he argued, given the sheer number of people in the conversation and the flood of voices and information during short, tense moments.

Howard Webb sees it differently, and few are better placed to weigh in. He is the only head of referees to have already lived through broadcasting video technology conversations live during matches.

Back in August 2020, during the "MLS is Back" tournament staged after the coronavirus shutdown, the American league became the only competition to air those conversations live.

The experiment was brief, but it worked. Yet almost six years on, nobody else has tried it. Rather than becoming a model for the rest of world football, the American trial remains a footnote in the history of video technology.

For Webb, no single body can push this forward alone. The refereeing set-up in the English Premier League cannot make such a call on its own, because real change demands a wider consensus on the laws of the game and how they are applied.

The Premier League has pioneered and innovated in some aspects of handling video technology. Yet other major leagues have surpassed it in various respects.

This season has brought new innovations to English football. Among them is the use of cameras mounted on referees, "RefCam", with a live broadcast of the audio, alongside the publication of the transcripts of the conversations that took place between the video assistant referee and the on-field referee.

English football's top flight was also among the first competitions to let referees announce video technology decisions themselves in front of the fans.

That step in particular represents a rare gain for supporters inside the stadium, because it at least gives them a direct explanation of the decision rather than merely watching the replay on the giant screens. But the progress remains limited. The "Match Officials Mic'd Up" programme still appears only once a month.

The first episode of the current season goes out on Tuesday. That provides an ideal opportunity to present the audio recording relating to the offside decision concerning Fernandez. The problem is that a number of controversial cases have already passed without their audio recordings being revealed.

Take, for example, Harry Maguire's handball before Manchester United's goal against Ipswich Town, or the decision not to award Arsenal a penalty against Aston Villa.

Both cases sparked wide debate, but weeks passed without the public obtaining audio recordings clarifying how the referees thought, what the video assistant referee said, and why the decision ended up as it did.

Here lies the opportunity for the Premier League to develop the way it handles transparency. The problem is not necessarily making everything available live. It is the speed of revealing the information after the event has occurred.

Spain offers a different model. In La Liga, the audio and video recordings relating to video technology interventions that require a personal judgement from the referee are published, meaning the cases in which the on-field referee goes to the pitch-side monitor to review the incident and take a new decision.

More importantly, La Liga publishes these recordings on social media a few hours after the end of the match. Not after weeks. That gives fans a chance to understand controversial decisions while the debate about the match is still alive, rather than waiting until the event has lost a large part of its impact.

Italy has taken a different path. Its "Open VAR" programme, the Italian counterpart to the referees' conversations programme in England, stopped at the end of last season. The move followed the pressures that the programme was placing on the referees.

Germany has no programme permanently dedicated to presenting the details of video technology, although this situation may change in the coming seasons. The German league confines itself to sharing the audio recordings when there is a necessity or when they relate to cases that deserve clarification.

No single global model for handling video technology audio exists yet. Each league proceeds according to its own vision, between those who prefer wide disclosure, those who confine themselves to specific recordings, and those who avoid live broadcasting altogether.

Even if football one day allows video technology conversations to be broadcast live, something that looks distant at present, that would not make everything simple. Genuine practical obstacles remain.

Most reviews and checks happen while the match is still going on. It would be unrealistic, then, to expect commentators to fall silent every time the video technology room starts reviewing an incident.

Fans themselves do not necessarily want the atmosphere broken repeatedly to hear video technology discussions. Other cases, though, involve a match that has already stopped.

Manchester City's goal offered exactly that kind of moment, one that could serve as a suitable model. So why not broadcast the audio at least at times like these?

The problem lies in timing. The video assistant referee begins working almost the instant an incident occurs. If the broadcaster waits for a particular moment to switch the audio through to viewers, it may already have missed an important part of the conversation.

Talks can start before the broadcast producer even realises the review will matter enough to show. That turns the coordination between the video room and the television broadcast into something that could increase the delay rather than reduce it.

The delay tied to video technology is a problem in itself. Add another layer of waiting on top, waiting for a signal from a director or programme producer to begin broadcasting the audio, and the experience only grows more complicated. There may be a way round it, though.

The most realistic scenario may be to broadcast the video technology audio live only when the referee heads to the screen beside the pitch. Everything becomes clearer and better organised that way.

Everyone knows a review is under way. The referee stands in front of the screen, the match is stopped, and the fans wait for the decision.

Broadcasters could then air the conversation between the referee and the video assistant referee much as cricket does during its Decision Review System reviews.

This model may prove more workable than trying to broadcast every conversation inside the video technology room.

Australia's league has already taken a step in this direction. When the referee heads to the pitchside screen to review an incident, the giant screens inside the stadium show exactly what he is watching.

Even there, though, the audio stays silent. That tells you the problem is not only technical. It is not about the ability to transmit picture or sound, but about how far the game's governing bodies are willing to let the public in on details that until recently stayed among the referees.

Fans, in the end, will keep missing what happens in many of the game's most contentious moments, even when they sit just a few metres from the referee.

Football has long lagged behind other sports when it comes to using technology to help the public understand what is actually happening.

VAR changed the game, and the Premier League has taken important steps towards greater transparency. Yet the gap between what the television viewer knows and what the fan inside the stadium knows remains wide.

Here lies the paradox. Technology meant to make decisions clearer may leave the fan in the stands more confused than ever. "He sees the referee waiting, he sees the players waiting, he sees the screen showing the replay, but he does not know what is being said, he does not know what the referees are discussing, and he does not know why the decision is taking all this time."

The real question now may not be whether football can broadcast the audio of the video technology, but rather: "When will it decide that the fan deserves to know what is happening?" For now, the road to that moment looks long.

Nearly ten years have passed since video technology arrived in football. Even so, hearing "VAR" conversations live remains closer to the exception than the rule.

The Premier League still has a genuine chance to move things forward here. Not by opening up every conversation on air, but by speeding up the release of recordings, widening transparency, and giving fans inside the stadiums the same information viewers at home receive.

The technology exists. The recordings are already being made. Some leagues have proven publication is possible. So one question hangs in the dark: "Why does the fan still not hear anything?"