Video replays on track for use in 2017-18 Bundesliga

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Tests with video assistant referee (VAR) technology have proved successful and the use of it in next season's Bundesliga matches is on track, a senior German Football Association official said. The technology, using video replays and off-pitch referees, has been developed to help officials make better decisions, therefore improving the quality of matches. The referee communicates with two video assistant referees sitting in a room in the stadium with access to all camera angles. They look at goals scored, penalties awarded, straight red cards and cases of mistaken identity, when a player awarded a yellow or red card is not actually involved in an incident. "Up to now it's going super, but now we are starting with the live tests, for example the communication between the video assistant and referee," the German Football Association's vice-president of referees and qualification Ronny Zimmermann said. He said feedback from around the soccer world had been "positive without exception". "I believe everyone wants this. Everyone wants these planning errors in the system taken away," he said. League matches as well as promotion/relegation playoff games and the Supercup will use the technology, the German football League has said. Australia, Brazil, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and the United States were among the first countries to have conducted tests. The first international in which the technology was tested was a friendly between Italy and France in September last year. A final decision on the introduction of this technology will be taken by world soccer's governing body FIFA in 2018. (Reporting by Karolos Grohmann, editing by Ed Osmond)