The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) announced yesterday that it will utilize the video assistance referee system (VAR) in the third round of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 qualifiers, which will commence by September 2021. Although it is not yet clear how this stage of the tournament will be held, the Saudi newspaper “Al-Eqtisadiyah”, quoting an informed source in the AFC, said that the organization’s intention is to hold the games based on home and away system. Due to the outbreak of the coronavirus, the AFC decided that AFC Champions League for the past two seasons would be held in a single country. The second round of the 2022 World Cup qualifiers was also held centrally in one country from each group (with the exception of the China group which was sh9fted to UAE after the authorities in China refused bending the quarantine rule).

if the AFC decided that the third round of the World Cup qualifiers will be carried out on a home and away basis. the use of VAR will be mandatory. Some Asian countries have not introduced such a system, amongst them is Iran.  This technology has been used in recent years in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, but Iran’s Football Federation (FFIRI) and the local broadcaster IRIB have not yet been able to purchase this system due to financial and infrastructure problems. One of the reasons Persepolis lost the hosting of the 2020 Asian Champions League final was the lack of VAR technology.

It seems that along with some other problems that Iranian football currently has to host, the lack of a VAR will further cause the Iranian national team to be deprived of hosting in the most critical stage of the World Cup qualifiers. Iran is seeded in pot A along with Japan for the third qualifying round of the World Cup and is likely to be grouped with teams such as Australia, South Korea, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the UAE