By Chalien Dantes 

FIFA is moving ahead with plans to trial VAR checks on corner kicks at the 2026 World Cup, even though domestic leagues have rejected the idea for regular play.

 At an October meeting of the International Football Association Board, there was agreement to expand VAR to review cases where a second yellow card was wrongly shown and led to a red, but the proposal to check corners was turned down, meaning FIFA will need to run a special trial in the United States, Mexico, and Canada next summer.

The initiative will be revisited at IFAB’s January meeting, but FIFA has a history of testing new technology in its tournaments.

Semi-automated offside detection and referees announcing VAR decisions to fans are just two examples of previous experiments, and a similar approach could be used for corner checks. Pierluigi Collina, FIFA’s head of referees, supports the move as part of a broader review of VAR, and he’s open to expanding it further, believing that any quickly identifiable error should be communicated.

He pointed to the Euro 2016 final, when Portugal was wrongly awarded a late free kick that nearly resulted in a goal, as a key example of why improvements are needed.