Referees Manager and VAR team leader for the Ghana Football Association (GFA), Alex Kotey, has announced that GFA President Kurt Okraku is advocating for the introduction of Video Assistant Referee (VAR) technology in the second round of the 2024/25 Ghana Premier League, scheduled to begin in January 2025.
Last week, a FIFA delegation, featuring key experts Inokuchi Takaaki and Michael Bailey, visited Ghana to share their knowledge of VAR technology and its implementation processes.
In an exclusive interview, Kotey emphasized that Okraku is eager to see VAR integrated into the league to enhance officiating standards.
The GFA is currently awaiting FIFA’s official approval to implement VAR in Ghana’s domestic leagues.
We don’t expect any media person to go sit on radio whilst they are being used to use or come up with language or words that are not in conformity with the VAR, you know, and so we need to take the media, the broadcasters, and everybody into a very some form of training just for them to know the language, you know, that they need to use when they are broadcasting or they are commentating or whatever it is.
And so 2025 -26 is our action plan, but we will try and make sure that we have some trials before the implementation itself, okay.
President, our president is pushing very hard and he even wants it to start, you know, in the middle, he thinks that by the second round of the league, we should even start with the VAR.
And so it is a lot of work, but we are to do it. And so we’ll try and put our hands together and see how best it can be done.
