Thursday night’s World Cup knockout match between Croatia and Portugal put FIFA’s VAR precision under a bright spotlight—and it also made the NFL’s slower path to ball-spot technology harder to justify.
Thursday night’s World Cup knockout-round match between Croatia and Portugal wasn’t just a tense test between two teams. It was also a live demonstration—for better or worse—of the extreme precision FIFA has embraced through VAR.
Watching it work, the comparison to the NFL becomes difficult to ignore. The NFL does use technology to decide whether the offense reached the line to gain. But the “spot of the ball. ” the all-important question of where the ball actually is. is still handled the old-fashioned way: by trusting the best guess of the official who believes most convincingly they know the right location.
That gap is exactly what makes this World Cup moment land. In soccer. VAR’s reach has been broad enough that viewers can feel the difference when decisions overturn what would otherwise be final judgments on the field. When technology produces the call correctly. it’s hard not to wonder why the NFL hasn’t moved faster to apply that same approach to football’s most consequential measurements.
The NFL, of course, isn’t unfamiliar with incremental change. Video replay in the league has evolved over the years through “baby steps. ” with new wrinkles added only after circumstances made older replay limits untenable. The video replay system has been adjusted when replay wasn’t available in a non-reviewable situation. and the league then changed the rule to cover that scenario in the future.
In this World Cup match. VAR offered a glimpse of what “full advantage of the chip in the ball” could look like if it were pursued with the same urgency. The frustration is especially sharp in soccer when goals are wiped out by a VAR ruling for offside—because goals are scored so rarely and can carry so much weight. But the logic is simple: if technology can produce the right outcome in soccer. it needs to be used in football too.
And in football, the pressure is even more immediate. Careers—primarily coaches—ride on game outcomes, and betting adds another layer where full accuracy becomes critical. That’s why this contrast matters beyond pure curiosity. The World Cup showed how far VAR can go when precision is treated as non-negotiable. and it makes the NFL’s remaining reliance on the officials’ spot look like something the league still needs to close.
If anything, the experience of seeing VAR perform through this World Cup knockout stage should be the reminder the NFL needs to put its foot on the gas when it comes to taking full advantage of what technology can do.
World Cup VAR Croatia Portugal NFL technology in sports video replay offside betting