KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 9 — The high cost of providing Video Assistant Referee (VAR) technology requires joint efforts from the Football Association of Malaysia (FAM) and the Malaysian Football League (MFL), said FAM vice president Mohd Firdaus Mohamed.
Mohd Firdaus said he was of the opinion that the MFL would use it more but the referees were still from FAM, so joint efforts from FAM and MFL were necessary to pay for the VAR equipment.
“As for the teams, they may help in terms of infrastructure preparation at the stadium,” he said when asked to comment on the party that needs to be responsible for disbursing a large amount of funds to advance the development of local football referees to adopt VAR.
Mohd Firdaus, however, said that inspections at all stadiums in the country are necessary to ensure the readiness of the venues so that the system can be implemented properly.
He said there was no pressure on FAM to buy VAR equipment, but rather the need to improve the quality of local referees in the long term.
“There are certain stadiums that may not be suitable and so on, so the technical department needs to first go to each stadium to identify what needs to be upgraded.
“We see that it is more of a need than pressure to go in a more professional direction. Our neighbour Thailand is already using VAR,” he said.
On Tuesday, FAM expressed its readiness to introduce the VAR system in the 2023 Malaysia League competition with the FA Cup and Malaysia Cup to be selected for trials subject to certain matches such as the semi-finals and finals.
— Bernama
