Championships in South Africa

Innocent Kurira – Sports Reporter

COSAFA is set to take the use of Video Assistant Referee (VAR) to another level at the 2025 Women’s Championships by increasing the number of games the system will be in use at the competition.

The tournament is to be staged in Gqeberha, South Africa from October 22-November 2 and will have a record 14 teams, making it the largest women’s senior competition on the African continent.
Last year COSAFA used VAR from the semi-finals onwards, but this time will extend that to the final round of group games too, making it nine fixtures that will have the system in place. The hope is that next year it will be all games, but for now, there are not enough certified referees in the region to do that, something COSAFA is working hard to change.

“What is important this year is that we have gone a step forward and increased the number of VAR games at this tournament from the semi-finals to include the last group stage games as well. They will all be live with VAR online,” Cosafa referees manager Felix Tangawarima said.
“We now have enough referees certified to cover that number of games. But during the entire tournament, we will be using VAR as a training aid, running it in the background for the first two rounds of the group stages. This is to build the training hours that the match officials need so they can be certified. They will be using the system as they would normally, but it will just not be live and not affect the games.”

Tangawarima says they are well on course to have a full VAR in at least two of their tournaments in 2025, and definitely the men’s senior COSAFA Cup.
“We are anticipating that next year we will have VAR from game one of every group. When it comes to the COSAFA Cup, we already have enough certified referees for that. We are the only zone in CAF to have used VAR for the Under-20 qualifiers (from the semi-finals onwards). You can see the development stages we have done. Even CAF has agreed that we are doing more (with VAR) than what they are doing. So, I need to appreciate the support we are getting from the COSAFA leadership.”

Currently on the go in Gqeberha is a five-day workshop for referees that Tangawarima says will focus on practical VAR sessions.
“The difference with this workshop is that we are not concentrating so much on theory presentations, it is purely VAR training. We will be out on the field with players simulating VAR situations for the referees to train.
“For those who are not taking part on the field, we have them in the simulator, where they will be using clips of situations to make decisions. That is a continuous process up to the end of the tournament and it enables us to certify them with FIFA.”