There are tournament controversies and there are tournament controversies that produce a team acquiring a nickname so sticky that it follows them into the semifinal, and Argentina, who have been rechristened “VARgentina” on social media after benefiting from multiple Video Assistant Referee interventions that critics describe as stretching the technology’s mandate past what anyone agreed it was for, are carrying that name into Wednesday’s semifinal against England in Atlanta, Georgia.
The most recent controversy, per HuffPost’s live World Cup blog, involved a VAR intervention in Argentina’s quarterfinal against Switzerland that changed the underlying basis of a refereeing decision rather than correcting an obvious error, which is the distinction between what VAR was designed to do and what it did. A yellow card issued to Argentine midfielder Leandro Paredes was overturned after VAR review, with the technology determining that a different player had committed the foul, then not only changing who received the card but reversing the foul call itself, giving Argentina a free kick instead of Switzerland. ITV’s rules analyst for the World Cup, Christina Unkel, a former FIFA referee, said: “I don’t think it should have been applied in the first place. It was too broad. Where I’m struggling with it is we’re not just changing who gets the card, we’re changing the underlying decision from a free kick going this way to saying no, no, no, it’s actually a decision completely opposite way. So we’re changing the basis of the decision. And to me, that is where we are now officially, I think, in the re-refereeing area that VAR has been fighting to try to stay out of.”
Argentina also benefited in their round of 16 against Egypt from a Messi penalty that Egyptian supporters described as generously awarded, in a match they were losing 2-0 before Messi made it 2-2 and Julian Alvarez scored the winner in stoppage time, which is the sequence that produced the VARgentina nickname in its fullest form: a team that was losing, then got a penalty, then won, in a tournament where the technology keeps intervening on their behalf. Argentina’s supporters note that the decisions were each technically correct. Switzerland’s supporters note that technically correct and directionally consistent are different things.
England fans, who have their own relationship with refereeing controversies involving Argentina dating to a handball in Mexico City in 1986, are currently processing all of this ahead of Wednesday with what can be described as heightened attention.
When the team nicknamed “VARgentina” plays England in the semifinal 40 years after the Hand of God, and the technology that was supposed to replace referee errors has generated its own category of controversy, what exactly is the game supposed to settle?
Sources
HuffPost: 2026 FIFA World Cup Live Updates
HuffPost: Alvarez’s 112th-Minute Goal Helps Lift Argentina Past Switzerland 3-1 And Into World Cup Semifinals
