Reinventing Football: Which laws should change? Handball? Offside? Penalties?

Will VAR ever be accepted? Perhaps not in its current form, so how about adapting it to a challenge system?

You might not have heard of Fifa’s Football Video Support (FVS), which is being trialled in several leagues including Liga F – the top flight of the women’s game in Spain.

Under FVS, a coach is given two challenges per game. When they are activated, the on-field referee goes to the monitor to watch the incident back and make a decision. There isn’t a VAR poring over the footage, just a replay operator to show the incident to the referee.

Everton and England goalkeeper Jordan Pickford likes the theory.

“With VAR involved, I’d do it like cricket,” Pickford said. “They’ve got two decisions and the captain has got to make sure they review at the right time, in so many seconds. I think that would keep the speed of the game up, and keep it flowing.”

Sound good? It has its merits. The assumption is there will be better final outcomes, though trials have shown that’s not always the case, and mistakes are still made by a referee at the screen.

Match of the Day presenter Gabby Logan thinks there’s a different way of doing it.

“It’s to have a time limit on VAR,” she said. “We all agree now it’s here to stay, and it often does good things, but the time it can take is tiresome. It stops the game. People get angry with it.

“If it was 90 seconds only, I think we’d sort a lot of that out because if it’s not clear and obvious in 90 seconds, it’s not clear and obvious.”

But for former England defender Stephen Warnock, the solution is simpler – get rid of VAR.

“I’m fed up of players not celebrating goals, the fans not knowing what’s going on in the stadium, and there’s far too many inconsistencies with it and it’s down to human error which is still a massive problem,” he said.