A verdict with no evidence - FIFA use of VAR System

A machine ended a nation's World Cup by a margin no one is allowed to check.

On June 26th 2026 in Seattle, Iranian defender Shoja Khalilzadeh scored a stoppage-time winner that would have carried Iran into the knockout rounds for the first time. The offside system erased it. No appeal, no published error rate, no independent audit — Iran went home ninth of twelve third-placed teams, unbeaten but eliminated by an unproven instrument. In A Verdict Without Evidenct, Arash Bateni — a responsible-AI practice lead with a doctorate in operations research — measures FIFA's semi-automated offside against 28 core requirements drawn from the EU AI Act, NIST, OECD, and measurement science. The score is zero of twenty-eight. ### The centimeter-vision, millimeter-verdict gap Cameras track 29 body points on each of 1,248 scanned players at 50 frames per second. A sprinter moves roughly 17 centimeters between frames — but the verdicts are issued in millimeters. The crisp 3D animation shown on the broadcast is not a second opinion; it is the same positional estimate redrawn in high definition, inheriting every error from data known only to centimeters. The industry's own numbers point the wrong way: - The Premier League runs the same technology with a 5 cm tolerance - FIFA's auto-alert only fires above 10 cm - Independent analysis suggests reliability around 9 in 10 at the tightest margins ### Six disclosures FIFA has not made Bateni's yardstick is not perfection or source code. It is six ordinary disclosures any trusted instrument should carry — a published error rate, a declared decision rule, confidence per verdict, defined operating limits, an auditable record, and independent verification. FIFA calls the system semi-automated because a referee confirms each verdict. But confirming an output you cannot question is not oversight — it is endorsement. No official has ever publicly reversed a positional call. The result is accountability laundering: the referee defers to the machine, FIFA points to the referee, the vendor points to FIFA. The stakes are not just sporting. A record $871 million in prize money rides on these calls, and the same architecture — unauditable systems issuing high-stakes verdicts — now decides loans, jobs, benefits, and bail. Absence of evidence is not neutrality. It is a burden left undischarged — for football, and for every machine passing judgment on someone's file.