The World Football Regulatory Authority admitted that the VAR protocol related to "mistaken identity" was used incorrectly at the 2026 World Cup, with the second yellow card for Breel Embolo in the match Switzerland lost to Argentina in the quarter-finals.
More than 2 weeks after the incident and more than 1 week after the 2026 World Cup ended, people blamed this information for being released too late, unable to change anything. Of course, individual Embolo and the Swiss people fell into a sense of injustice and were advised to accept the imperfection of life. If hundreds of thousands of Argentinians sign a petition requesting to replay the final match, millions of Swiss people also have the same right after witnessing their home team being eliminated by Argentina due to that mistake. Right?
However, what is worth mentioning is that although the VAR's implementation protocol is wrong, is Embolo himself simply a victim? Some people say, Embolo is "exonerated", but is he really wronged? The psychology of the majority is often seen as just looking at the results to evaluate and forgetting the starting cause.
Here, it was the Argentine national team that pushed themselves into a state of helplessness in the final, it was Embolo who created conditions for VAR to appear and intervene. Here, VAR misunderstood "identity confusion", but that mistake stemmed from a wrong action. If it was legal, Embolo would not have received a second yellow card - meaning he would not have been sent off and people would have thought Switzerland had a chance to overcome Argentina. So people completely forgot the question: Why did Embolo choose to pretend to fall? Why did he want to seek an advantage with an inshonest behavior?
VAR and the referee were procedurally wrong when trying to "demand justice" for the match. But the technological error could not overcome the problem in the attitude of playing football. Embolo fell to deceive the referee and when he fell right at the time when the legal boundaries were not clear, he had to pay the price with a red card. Switzerland paid the price with defeat.
It is not yet clear whether the players abused it or not, but it is necessary to understand that when you are the starting point of dirty tricks, bad actions, the referee's vision may not come, but there is VAR, there are functional agencies and the eyes of people, the price to pay is always commensurate.
Who can I blame!?
