During the USA men’s soccer game against Bosnia and Herzegovina, a major penalty was called by the video review official, not the match official. And a lot of people call it bad.
Video commentary in slow motion
There are now video commentaries on many sports. Given the variety of cameras covering each game, officials can view the game from different angles. They can tell who touched the ball last before it went out of bounds. They can use them to determine if a player is offside. And they can use them to determine whether a violation has occurred or how serious it is.
Video review at the World Cup will be continuous and live during matches. In addition to the on-field officials, there are Video Assistant Referees (called VARs) who monitor the game live and communicate with the on-field referee. They make suggestions and can help if the on-field umpire misses something important.
They use different camera angles and are capable of slow motion. Unfortunately, slow action can change the way they evaluate the offense.
Assessing slow motion and targeting
It’s fascinating to see things in slow motion. There are some great slow motion videos on YouTube that show a lot of things. Having slow motion has changed our understanding of how things and animals work. Watching animals in slow motion is amazing.
But watching in slow motion also changes the appreciation of events.
One of the most important judgments people make is whether an action is accidental or intentional. Targeting is important. The use of intent is important when evaluating how someone has harmed another person. When we think of what happened as an accident, we react differently than when we think that someone intentionally harmed another person.
Slow motion leads people to think the motion is deliberate. Several experiments were conducted in which people were shown motion at full speed and in slow motion. The audience is asked to decide whether the action was accidental or intentional. For example, Caruso and colleagues (2016) were the first to examine how regular speed and slow motion affected judgments of intent to kill in real surveillance video of a robbery and shooting. They found that people rated their intent to kill higher when watching the video in slow motion.
Slow motion and sports violations
Slow-motion also changes the assessment of the intent, and therefore the severity, of fouls and penalties in sports. Interestingly, Caruso and colleagues (2016) looked not only at shooting surveillance video, but also at videos of possible penalties from football games (American football, so not soccer). In this case, slow motion also led people to rate the communication as more intentional. Caruso and his colleagues hypothesized that when people see something in slow motion, the person has more time to plan and adjust their actions. When we see harm in slow motion, we think that the person can do more to stop the harm. So we think they intended to do that. At full speed, there is clearly not enough time to make these changes.
How about soccer in the world or real soccer? In various studies, researchers have found that slow motion leads to greater intentionality ratings (e.g., Schütz et al., 2026). Spitz and colleagues (2018) looked at real soccer officials who rated the severity of fouls seen at full speed and in slow motion. They found that when watching slow motion, officials rated the punishment as more severe. In football terms, they considered the offense more serious; that is, they were more likely to give a red card than a yellow card. The red card led to a video review for the American player.
Do the refs hate us?
Was this US foul worthy of a red card? Were the officials biased when they saw the slow movement? Were the officials biased against the US national team? I don’t know enough football to judge whether a contact deserves a red card or not.
But many people call it bad. I’ve seen complaints that another player from another team committed the same foul and that famous player didn’t get a red card. I have also seen people complain about the lack of fouls on the other team during the game. Having watched the game, I definitely felt that the referees were against us.
But we always feel that the referees are against us and that the other team commits more fouls than the angels on our team. A classic study in psychology documented this (Hastorf & Cantril, 1954). People routinely believe that fouls called on their team are unfair, that the other team commits more fouls, and that referees are biased. (I wrote about this important article perception and memory are faulty ago.)
So I don’t trust my own judgment. But I also don’t trust referees when they rely on slow motion to judge how serious a foul is.
