Serie A’s new, lighter use of VAR has become one of the season’s quieter successes: a change designed to keep matches moving without leaving referees without support when a decisive mistake must be corrected.
SEO Title: Serie A’s VAR Approach Draws Attention as Italy Keeps Games Moving
SEO Description: Serie A’s more restrained use of VAR has brought fewer interruptions, three goals per match on average and no 0-0 draws so far, offering a contrast to Premier League controversy.
Serie A’s VAR model offers a different lesson
For years, Italian football pushed hard for technology to be introduced. Now the league is attracting attention for a different reason: the attempt to use it with greater restraint. VAR has been part of Serie A since the 2017-18 campaign, but its application has changed over time, and this season officials have been instructed to treat intervention as exceptional rather than routine.
The early numbers support that direction. The first penalty of the campaign arrived only after 32 matches, an unprecedented wait, while there have still been no goalless draws. Serie A is averaging three goals per game, with a more continuous rhythm becoming part of the competition’s opening weeks.
Luigi De Siervo, the league’s chief executive, explained that the policy was adopted “to increase effective playing time and make matches more dynamic and entertaining.” The objective is not to abandon video assistance, but to prevent every marginal incident from becoming an extended review and a fresh interruption to the afternoon.
The contrast has been especially clear across the Channel. The Manchester derby was settled by a goal initially ruled out by the referee before VAR advised that it should stand, a decision later acknowledged as wrong by the refereeing authorities. Manchester United received a public apology. Nothing in that episode removes the merit of Enzo Maresca’s Manchester City, who won the derby with that goal and deserved their result, but the incident renewed the argument around the place of VAR in English football.
In the Premier League, the technology has increasingly become a source of frustration for supporters and those inside the game, rather than simply a safeguard against clear errors. The concern is not merely a wrong call; it is the sense that lengthy and repeated intervention can take something essential away from football while still failing to eliminate controversy.
Italy’s early-season experiment offers another path. A system that steps in only in exceptional circumstances can, at least in these first rounds, allow referees to manage the match while preserving VAR for genuinely significant errors. The hope is that the balance lasts through the season, when pressure, relegation fights and the race for Europe will test every principle more severely.
Serie A once set the standard for other leagues through its players, clubs and tactical influence. The Premier League now occupies much of that global position, drawing many of the stars who might once have chosen Milan, Turin or Rome. Yet on the question of video officiating, English football has reason to examine what Italy is attempting.
If the Italian approach continues to produce quicker, more open matches without sacrificing essential fairness, VAR may become one area in which Serie A again provides a useful example for the rest of Europe.
