Preface: This continues as the third part in a series on the FIFA World Cup. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here.
Video Assisted Replay (VAR) has played a prominent role in the 2026 World Cup. Let’s review the good, the bad & the ugly in FIFA VAR so far.
Belgium v Senegal in the round-of-32 was an astonishing game that had it all, an example of World Cup football at its best. VAR came into play late in extra time with the score tied 2-2. A penalty kick was correctly awarded after VAR consulted with the referee and had him check the monitor replay to review his initial no-call. Watching the play initially I thought it was a foul. The Belgium player was about to put a cross on goal from 3 yards away and the defender fouled him to prevent that. That’s a penalty kick. Excellent use & application of VAR.
Germany v Paraguay, also in the round-of-32 was an example of VAR over-application and taking jurisdiction on a play the referee initially called correctly. Germany gets a header goal on a corner kick. The crowd goes wild, while VAR signals to the referee to review for goalkeeper interference on Germany. Fox analyst Peter Schmeichel, who was for 8-seasons the keeper for Manchester United called the VAR overturn “soft.” That was my impression of the play also. The Paraguayan keeper falls to the ground after minimal contact from a German attacker. The FIFA idea is goalkeepers need to be protected. Everyone agrees on that, but there is also an element of physicality that is inherent to the game.
Players are tugging each others shirts, grabbing & holding all over the field and it’s mostly no-calls; and then you bail out Paraguay with that weak stuff? Germany should have been ahead 2-1, in a game they lost in a shootout. Fox loves the drama the VAR overturn created, so immediately it gets you thinking about the motive for that overturn. Former USMNT-er Clint Dempsey earned his analyst stripes on Fox by backing Peter Schmeichel as “a solid member of the goalkeepers union,” or something to that effect and agreed with an all-timer great goalkeeper’s assessment of that soft VAR call.
For the record, Germany looked slow & old, and would have been destroyed by France in the round-of-16, so I don’t lament their World Cup exit. Paraguay will give France a better game because they play with more passion & energy. But with that said, VAR is the huge historical asterisk in that game.
Note: VAR applied this keeper interference rule more correctly in the first half of the Spain v Austria round-of-32 game. Spain was disallowed a goal off a corner kick on a correct VAR ruling. The rule should be interpreted as the goalie has to play strong in the box in order to get a keeper interference call. Germany-Paraguay was a bailout call, in NBA terminology.
England v DR Congo in the round-of-32 had a really bad no-call on a foul by the Congolese goalkeeper on Harry Kane in the penalty box. Kane was about to touch it and shoot into an open goal to tie the game 1-1, when the keeper wipes him out. The referee missed the call, but after a 10-second VAR check it’s play on. Before most people even had a chance to see the replay, the no-call had already been upheld by VAR. Obviously VAR needed to recommend the referee take another look, like it would with Belgium-Senegal later that day.
This is a decision which VAR officials should have to answer directly to the sports media. Fans really want to know why the referee wasn’t instructed to AT LEAST take another look at that play. This is the World Cup, and you have to get those calls right for the fans to fully believe in the game. That needs explaining and full transparency to avoid repeating itself in a more crucial later match.
Switzerland v Qatar, was a first-round group play match. The Swiss got a goal on a set piece that looked clearly offside on all replays, but VAR never showed the 3-D image of the play to confirm it onside. Switzerland’s goal counted in a game that ended in a 1-1 draw. Four-and-a-half hours later FIFA declared a “technical outage” happened on that play, but that it was confirmed just before and unfortunately no image exists to confirm this. It sounded an awful lot like the official explanation of Jeffery Epstein’s death by suicide. I mentioned this incident in my initial discussion of FIFA VAR in part 1 of my 2026 World Cup coverage.
United States v Bosnia-Herzegovina in the round-of-32 was another over-application of VAR. US striker Folarin Balogun was sent off with a VAR recommended red card, on a play that deserved only a yellow. This makes him ineligible to play against Belgium in the round-of-16. Folarin Balogun is one of the USMNT’s best players, so this adversity will test their depth & resolve against a world-class team.
Belgium is about two levels below France & Argentina who are clearly the best teams in the World Cup. They’re below Brazil & Spain too, which puts Belgium & probably the US at the middle-to-bottom of that mish-mash with England, Portugal, Colombia, Morocco, Norway & Mexico. These are mostly good, but not great teams.
As I’ve outline from the start, the draw and bracketing have put the USMNT in the best possible position. From now on, they have to beat a good team. Bosnia-Herzegovina couldn’t score, even when the US went a man down. Belgium, and what comes after aren’t such cupcakes.
Once a team wins a match at the World Cup, all its fans instantly believe they can win the World Cup. Call it irrational exuberance, but that’s the level of excitement this tournament brings. It never fails to bring athletic beauty, competition and controversy to life. It’s reach is so global & powerful that it can’t be resisted. All I attempt to do is analyze based on my experiences. It’s tough to predict, and I’m not a betting man anyway. For me it’s about understanding what’s going on– on & off the pitch.
Some form of VAR is used in all sports. Who controls this technology and when & how it’s applied are the critical questions for players, managers & fans. If replay officiating mistakes aren’t acknowledged & understood, then they will continue to occur. That’s true in all professional sports.
Belgium v US in the 2014 round-of-16 was a legendary match that gives fans context for this upcoming contest. Tim Howard had 16 saves and was Superman in goal. Belgium should have won 2-0, or 3-0 in regulation, if not for a superhuman effort from Tim Howard. Belgium won 2-1 in extra time. Clint Dempsey had a chance to tie it at the very end, but the Belgium keeper made a great save. The USMNT maybe could have used Landon Donovan in that game but manager Jürgen Klinsmann didn’t select him for the team.
This version of the USMNT is stronger & better managed, and should do better against Belgium. On the flip-side, Belgium has shown resilience and the ability to play from behind, which makes them extremely dangerous. This is by far the toughest test yet for the 2026 USMNT. In many ways, this is the match that will decide their World Cup fate. If the USMNT wins, it will silence its long-term doubters who have been mostly correct for so long. If the USMNT loses, it establishes their ceiling as a good, but never great team– kinda like Mexico. This is World Cup pressure, and the round-of-16 is where it separates the men from the boys.
Thu 02 Jul 2026 08:58 PM CDT
The best teams eliminated in the round-of-32 were the Netherlands, Croatia, Senegal, Japan & Germany. Note that this is published before Argentina v Cape Verde & Colombia v Ghana. The Netherlands rightly belong in that group of above mentioned good-but-not-great teams in the 2026 World Cup. They were given a brutal bracket to accommodate the host national teams’ chances of success. The Netherlands were bracketed with Morocco in the round-of-32, and those murky dynamics were discussed in part 2.
Estadio Azteca, or Aztec Stadium in English, is the most beautiful football field in the world. It will host one final match in the round-of-16, Mexico v England, which should be a cracker. Rebecca Lowe will recommend leaving plenty of time for cup of tea before kickoff. Ian Darke recommended football fans record the match times in their diary, so they don’t miss them. And after hearing all this & more, I’m chuckle to myself and think along the lines of professor Henry Higgins, “Why can’t the English learn to speak?”
More 2026 World Cup matches deserve to be played at the Azteca (& Monterrey), but instead, converted NFL stadiums will host the remaining matches in the US. I glanced on the politics of this in part 1. Unless there’s a major upset no one saw coming, that’s it for this inaugural round-of-32 knockout stage in the World Cup. Notice how all the small-nation feel-good stories have disappeared, or are about to disappear. The level of difference between many of the teams remaining and those just eliminated is very slight, but that fractional difference in quality & team play has a way of shining through to get a winning result.
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Italy was the best team to not qualify for the 2026 World Cup. For the 4-time tournament champions, this signals changes need to be made with the Italian national team. For brief context, Italy’s Serie A is one of the “Big 5” football leagues in Europe, along with the Premiere League (England), League 1, (France), La Liga (Spain), and Bundesliga (Germany). Most of the top players on all these national teams play (or have played) in at least one of these top leagues, which again are all in Europe.
Italy gets criticized for playing not-to-lose, ugly football. The Italian style traditionally emphasizes defense, scoring on set pieces, and being aces at penalty kicks. The traditional issues with their national teams are creativity & lack of scoring. Italy last won the World Cup in 2006, and it was in their style.
But in this modern game, speed & explosiveness– particularly seen from the African national teams in this World Cup– expose the deficiencies of this type of outdated football thinking. In short, I don’t believe an “Italian style” can win anymore, just as I don’t believe the “German style” of playing in the air and being physical can win either. Those great players aren’t there anymore. Meanwhile the rest of the world has improved, the rules have changed, and we have VAR now so traditional World Cup national styles matter less than ever.
Even the “Brazilian style” of controlled passing in tight spaces can be neutralized with disciplined packed-in defenses in the box, so they play in the air as needed. Both Germany & Italy need to re-think & re-invent their playing styles if they hope to win a fifth World Cup. World Cup winning teams play all these above-mentioned styles, as needed. Plus, you need young legs to create goals & prevent them. Teams that tried to hang on with older players got outpaced at the 2026 World Cup. That’s modern football.
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