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Graham Scott, a retired Premier League referee with a decade of top-flight experience and over 100 VAR assignments under his belt, just did something no one at FIFA asked him to do. He reviewed every single red card decision at the 2026 World Cup. All 13 of them.
His verdict, published in The Athletic, is essentially a masterclass in how video technology has quietly changed what referees are actually judging. And the findings land at a moment when the tournament’s officiating has become a geopolitical flashpoint, not just a sporting one.
The VAR problem no one wants to talk about
Scott’s central argument is deceptively simple. VAR, the Video Assistant Referee system introduced to eliminate obvious errors, has shifted the entire framework of how fouls are assessed. Instead of evaluating intent, speed, and context in real time, officials now freeze-frame collisions and judge based on point of contact.
In English: if a slow-motion replay shows studs grazing a shin, it’s a red card. Doesn’t matter if the player was moving at full sprint and had no realistic way to avoid contact. The technology has made referees into forensic analysts rather than real-time judges of the game.
When the White House calls FIFA
The most explosive finding in Scott’s review intersects with a controversy that has dominated headlines for days. US striker Folarin Balogun received a red card during the tournament, a decision that was subsequently reversed after what reports describe as intervention from US President Donald Trump in FIFA’s decision-making process.
Here’s the thing. Belgium filed a similar appeal around the same tournament. Their appeal was denied.
Scott also flagged an incorrectly disallowed goal for Egypt against Argentina, adding another data point to his case that the tournament’s officiating has been uneven at best. For a former official who spent his career in the Premier League before retiring in 2025, the willingness to publicly critique his peers’ work suggests the problems are significant enough to warrant breaking the usual code of silence among referees.
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