The Rule of Insufficient Information: When VAR Delivers a Verdict of 'Cannot Assess'

Kazan, 16 June 2026, evening. Referee Andrés Cunha first waved away Antoine Griezmann's tumble inside the box. Then he walked to the pitchside monitor and came back to reverse himself — the first VAR-awarded penalty in World Cup history. France won 2–1. In those forty minutes I did not enter the 'was it a penalty' argument. I wrote about how the burden of proof had shifted: the on-field decision stopped being a decision and became a hypothesis, one that had to be kept alive with evidence. Since that day, VAR has never been, for me, merely a question of cameras and calibration. It is a question of jurisdiction. Who decides, who overturns, and under what condition — the whole apparatus rests on those three questions. And in their shadow sits a silent, almost invisible decision rule that nobody ever states out loud: 'insufficient information — cannot assess.' This article is a search for that rule. In March 2026, the IFAB AGM rewrote the handball clause of Law 12 and formally embedded VAR in the Laws of the Game. I was 51 then, one of two women in a forty-seat press box at Anfield. I published a four-thousand-word close reading of the new wording on my own newsletter — no editor, no outlet — arguing that 'deliberate' had been quietly replaced by 'unnatural silhouette' eighteen months before anyone said it out loud. Nine hundred people read it; four hundred of them were referees. Rulebooks are exactly like this. The decision is made on the pitch, but the boundaries of the decision are set in an office, in a committee, in a footnote. That 2026 reading taught me: a match's outcome is often fixed long before kickoff, in the drafting of the law. I began in 2026 as a student reporter at the Pakistan Observer, and that same year became Bangladesh's first English-language sports commentator. Then came Liverpool — a BS in Economics (2026), eleven years in marine insurance, and in 2026, at 36, I walked away from a stable salary to freelance on football governance. By 2026 I realised I had spent fifteen years explaining, at every door, why a rules columnist deserved a credential. When the language of the law changes, nobody looks — but the outcomes change. Eight of every nine VAR controversies are really about 'did VAR get it wrong'; only one is about 'who has the authority to decide this.' The first question belongs to the fan. The second belongs to the law. VAR's core standard — 'clear and obvious error' — is a legal threshold, not a technological one. It means the absence of information is itself a decision. If the referee looks at the monitor and is not certain, the on-field call stands. In other words, no evidence equals the previous ruling upheld. That is the sporting form of the principle 'insufficient information, cannot assess.' There is an analytical layer here that is usually skipped. The VAR system has two tiers: review and interpretation. Review is the machine's work — angles, frames, offside lines. Interpretation is the human's work — and that is where jurisdiction enters. Who gets to say 'this is a clear error'? The on-field referee, the VAR-room referee, or the head of VAR? At international level, VAR protocol and Premier League protocol never match exactly. In FIFA tournaments the referee is encouraged to walk to the monitor. In the Premier League, the VAR room's judgement initially carried the day — what many called the 'silent re-review.' That divergence is legal pluralism: one game, one law, but different adjudicative jurisdiction. After 2026, the Premier League increased pitchside monitor use, because transparency had become a distinct value to fans and players. Toward the end of 2026, handball in the Premier League became so chaotic that the phrase 'unnatural silhouette' itself became the centre of the argument. Defenders began hiding their arms; attackers began aiming at hands. The gap between the 2026 and 2026 versions of Law 12 came down to one question: did the arm make the body bigger? But bigger by how much — a millimetre, or an inch? The law gave no measurement. So every decision was marginal, and every marginal decision carried the risk of 'insufficient information.' Another memorable case. In the opening moments of the 2026 Champions League final, just 24 seconds in, the ball struck Moussa Sissoko's arm, and a penalty was given. Many said it was never a penalty. But the real question was different: when VAR looked, did the information cross the 'clear and obvious error' threshold? If not, the on-field call stood. The decision was one of interpretation, and that interpretation was itself part of the written law. Here is a footnote story. In the 2026-20 season a phrase took hold — 'armpit offside' — as players in the Premier League were judged offside by millimetre-accurate lines drawn to an armpit or a toe. Fans laughed, some raged. But nobody asked: who drew the line? Who wrote the wording of Law 11? The answer: a committee that sits twice a year. The millimetre offside debate is not a debate about technology, but about the drafting of the law. Now semi-automated offside is arriving, ball-tracking is arriving, possibly a chip-in-ball. At the 2026 World Cup, the offside calls in the Argentina-Saudi Arabia match were the first major test of the semi-automated system. The technology said: offside. But the question remained: who fixed the meaning of the word 'offside'? Not the system — the wording of Law 11, and the committee that interprets it. Technology only applies that wording more precisely. This is the real analysis. The 'ambiguous' moments of offside are not the technology's fault. Law 11 says a player who is not interfering is not offside. The word 'interfering' is a matter of judgement. The semi-automated system draws the line, but it does not measure 'interference.' Where the machine stops, the law begins. In the current transfer window, this same problem returns in a different guise. Every rumour is an 'insufficient information' event. The structure of a release clause, an agent's motive, the number on the wage bill — those are the real evidence. 'Club X is interested' is a hypothesis, one that must be kept alive with evidence. I read transfer news through a referee's eye: which detail is clear, and which is merely social-media heat? The conventional explanation: VAR has made the game fairer because there are fewer errors. True, but incomplete. My reading is that VAR has not so much reduced errors as redistributed blame for them. Before, the error belonged to the referee, alone. Now the error belongs to a system, to everyone, and therefore to no one. A fan sees a foul. I see a question: who has the authority to say it is a foul. That difference is the boundary between 'fan-brained outrage' and 'legal analysis.' To a fan, 'insufficient information' means either an eyesight problem or a conspiracy. To the law, 'insufficient information' means a decision standard — and every standard draws a boundary. There is a hidden trap here. Because the absence of information keeps the on-field call alive, the system unintentionally rewards 'not deciding.' If a referee knows that under doubt his earlier call will stand, he will not hesitate on marginal calls — because hesitation carries no cost. This is VAR's most under-discussed effect. It is not the technology's fault; it is the consequence of the rule's design. I spent eleven years in marine insurance, at a Liverpool firm. There I learned a phrase: 'doubt favours the insured.' The benefit of the doubt goes to the weaker party. In football we do the opposite — the benefit of the doubt goes to the previous ruling. Who is 'weaker' depends on how you see the game. Another trap: jurisdiction overreach. After Kazan and VAR, it is tempting to frame every officiating incident as an 'authority conflict.' But not every confusion is a jurisdiction conflict. Sometimes it is ordinary human error, a camera angle, or the pressure of time. Conflating the two turns analysis into argument. In 2026, when the Bundesliga returned behind closed doors, I stopped watching football as sport and started watching it as a dataset. I logged all 81 matches of the nine-round restart: the home-win rate fell from 43% to 33%. And IFAB's temporary five-substitution amendment — meant to protect players after a ten-week layoff — was being used tactically before half-time in 61 of them. After eighteen years of being told I did not understand the game, numbers were a language nobody could accuse me of faking. I published the table with one line: 'This rule is not temporary.' IFAB made it permanent in 2026. That is the lesson I bring to VAR. The decision rule that today stays silent under 'insufficient information' is probably not temporary either. It is a permanent constitutional principle: under doubt, the previous ruling stands. VAR will mature further — semi-automated offside, ball-tracking, possibly chip-in-ball. But it is a mistake to assume more technology means less absence of information. The reverse will hold: more frames, more marginal decisions, more moments of 'insufficient information.' So the real reform is not technological but constitutional. The question should be: when information is insufficient, what will the decision rule be? Will the on-field call be upheld, or will the benefit of the doubt be turned the other way? A league that has already changed its decision metrics can change this too. My proposal is simple: every league should publish its decision rule — which information leads to what. Transparency does not mean only showing the monitor; it means showing the standard. A league that shows fans the standard will win back trust. When I opened the rewrite at 2 a.m. in Kazan, I did not think the offside law would end up in a footnote. Today I know the match is lost there — on page ninety-four, in a footnote. The question nobody is asking is this: when the absence of information becomes new evidence, who will decide its jurisdiction?