“We won’t give up,” says Kristian, a bearded Valerenga fan standing defiantly outside the Intility Arena. “We want to be the first country to remove this disease. Then other countries will realise VAR can be defeated.”
It is the first weekend of Norway’s football season and, inside the stadium of Oslo’s biggest club, the stand where Valerenga’s most boisterous supporters congregate is completely empty as the game kicks off.
Thousands remain outside, refusing to enter until the 15-minute mark as part of a series of co-ordinated protests involving fans from every club in Norway’s top flight, the Eliteserien, as well as others from the division below.
It is a different scene in the away end, where the supporters of Viking are using another tactic to signal their hostility towards the video assistant referee system (VAR), which uses an official watching television replays away from the stadium to review significant on-field decisions. Viking fans take their seats but remain completely silent for the first 15 minutes.
All that can be heard are the shouts of the players, an occasional blow of the referee’s whistle or the thud of boot against ball. “Nei Til VAR!” reads the banner in Valerenga’s deserted Ostblokka stand. Translation: ‘No To VAR!’.
An empty stand at Valerenga as fans protest against VAR (Daniel Taylor/The Athletic)
The previous day, with the snowy peaks of Drammen visible in the distance, Stromsgodset’s match against Rosenborg got the new season underway with a silent protest of their own. Both sets of fans took part. No songs, no cheering, just virtual silence until the signal arrived after 15 minutes.
Rosenborg’s fans gathered behind a banner — “NFF Mafia” — that made it clear what they thought about the Norwegian Football Federation. Lampposts outside the stadium were decorated with stickers showing the “Hater VAR” (‘hate VAR’) message. A banner held up by Stromsgodset fans spelt it out another way: “FCK VAR”.
“Our supporters who are against VAR have the right to express their feelings,” Alfred Johansson, Rosenborg’s head coach, tells The Athletic. “It’s much better this way — a quiet 15 minutes — than other forms of action. Because we also know what it’s like when a game has to be stopped, or even cancelled, because of protests.”
Rosenborg fans make their feelings clear (Daniel Taylor/The Athletic)
In July last year, Rosenborg’s game against Lillestrom was abandoned when fans threw smoke bombs, tennis balls and — no kidding — fishcakes on the pitch. Other games in Norway’s 16-team Eliteserien have been targeted in similar ways.
This season, the fan groups have decided they will not actively disrupt games but the anger is real in a country where members run the football clubs and many feel VARs were brought in without a proper consultation process.
In January, the 32 clubs in Norway’s top two divisions voted 19-13 in favour of a motion for “the discontinuation of VAR as soon as possible”.
Critics accuse the review system of being unreliable and prone to human error, causing unnecessary delays, disrupting the flow of matches and, perhaps worst of all, often ruining the spontaneous joy that football’s most beautiful moment — a goal — is supposed to bring.
What seemed like a landmark victory, however, has not led to any changes. Instead, the NFF held a national assembly on March 1 for all 450 of its member clubs, all the way down to grassroots level, and they voted 321 to 129 against abolishing the technology. Anger has peaked since.
“We were hopeful we could get rid of VAR,” says Sebastian Hytten, leader of Valerenga’s Klanen fan group. “But it wasn’t a surprise the NFF worked so hard to keep it because, for them, it was a matter of honour. If they had lost the battle, they would have lost honour. They would have faced accusations that the supporters had taken over.”
The backlash against the VAR system can be felt in many ways in this part of Scandinavia.
One reminder for Lise Klaveness, president of the NFF, came outside her house in Nordstrand, a suburb south of Oslo.
“Maybe I had parked my car a little too far out,” she says. “Someone put a note on my windscreen to joke about how my car was parked and ‘it needs to go to VAR’ to decide what to do about it. Really funny.”
Klaveness, a lawyer and a former Norway international footballer, can laugh as she admits she has no idea who it was. But it hasn’t always been so amusing since it became clear her attitude to VARs had changed.
“I didn’t like VAR when it came in. I was a pundit in Russia at the 2018 World Cup and it was the first time VAR was used in an international championship. It was disturbing. We didn’t understand it, why we had to wait such a long time for decisions. It felt like disruption. People said it worked well but that was not the feeling the footballers and pundits had.”
Lise Klaveness, the head of the Norweigan FA, has been criticised for her support of VAR (Daniel Taylor/The Athletic)
Australia’s A-League became the first professional league to introduce VARs in 2017, followed by MLS in the United States later that year. Since then, almost every major league and competition in world football has adopted the technology. Yet, rather than removing controversy, it has led to anger, disillusionment and fierce criticism.
What nobody would have imagined, however, was that the most militant and organised mobilisation of VAR’s opponents would involve a nation not usually associated with dissent or dissatisfaction (the World Population Review ranked Norway as the seventh-happiest country in the world).
The story, for example, about the Stromsgodset player who had to take a VAR-awarded penalty while his club’s supporters, directly behind the goal, were singing, “F*** VAR”.
There was the walkout by Stabaek fans against Viking, directly after kick-off, and the tragicomedy that they missed a goal that was, after a VAR review, ruled out for handball. “Vi var her,” read the banner they left behind in a deserted stand (‘We were here’).
Valerenga fans disrupted one match by throwing a selection of pastries on the pitch to signify the alleged culture of coffee and croissants in NFF’s planning meetings.
Or how about Lillestrom’s trip to Rosenborg in 2023 when they were awarded a VAR-assisted, stoppage-time penalty to win 2-1 in the most dramatic circumstances?
“Our fans had travelled an hour’s flight or an eight-hour drive to go to that game,” says Hogner Trym, a Lillestrom fan and podcaster who campaigns against the VAR system through his Harde Mottak group (‘Hard Reception’). “Usually, we would go crazy, especially if you know the history between the two clubs. Here, we didn’t even celebrate. The attitude was, ‘This isn’t football’. The winning goal went in and we sat down.”
Lillestrom, relegated last season to Norway’s second tier, have taken a prominent role in the anti-VAR movement as the only club to vote against its introduction for the start of the 2023 season. The club have a sizeable number of what Klaveness calls “hardliners” and were also involved in the infamous fishcake game.
“That was the Rosenborg fans,” Trym clarifies. “Their idea was to throw fishcakes on the pitch so a flock of seagulls would come down and create a big scene. It didn’t go quite to plan but, in the end, the referee abandoned the match anyway.”
A match between Rosenborg and Lillestrom was abandoned in Norway after tennis balls, smoke bombs, and fishcakes were thrown onto the pitch 😳
Both sets of fans are currently protesting against the use of VAR in the Norwegian top flight. pic.twitter.com/s6lPkCPvpc
— Football on TNT Sports (@footballontnt) July 23, 2024
Critics of the NFF accuse the federation of being rocked by the 19-13 vote and engineering a way around it by involving teams further down the pyramid who would never play in a match using VARs. Those clubs, it is widely accepted, were encouraged to vote in line with the NFF’s preference to keep the technology.
“A lot of people are angry and disappointed,” says Ole Kristian Sandvik, spokesman for the Norwegian Supporter Alliance. “People are disappointed with the decision itself. But we are angry about the process, too. Norwegian people don’t usually protest too often but this has sparked something to say, ‘Hey, this isn’t right, it isn’t working and — excuse my French — we f*****g hate VAR’.”
The nationwide protests, according to their organisers, were to “raise awareness that member democracy is under attack by anti-democratic forces who want to take control of Norwegian football”.
Klaveness has built her reputation as a principled and progressive leader who was willing to ask difficult questions of FIFA and UEFA, regardless of the consequences for herself, if it meant speaking up for what she believed was right, particularly when it came to the Qatar World Cup and the bidding process for the 2030 and 2034 tournaments.
Now, though, some of Norway’s leading anti-VAR groups and campaigners are questioning whether UEFA influenced the decision to continue with the technology. The accusation is that European football’s governing body might have leaned on Klaveness at a time she is being added to UEFA’s executive committee.
Klaveness, whose playing career included 73 appearances for her country, is stung by the suggestion. “Rumours will get roots,” she tells The Athletic. “But it has no roots in truth. We went to UEFA to ask them what arguments they had for or against VAR and they were clear they didn’t want to affect us. That conspiracy is not true and it’s very important this is not set as poison.”
Her argument is that it has been “a very fair, open and transparent process” and, though she doesn’t put it exactly in these terms, her supporters say the issue is more that the protestors have (a) lost the argument, (b) need someone to blame, and (c) have a different idea about what democracy means.
A working group, led by former Oslo mayor and ex-Valerenga board member Raymond Johansen, carried out a four-month review of VAR’s good and bad points. Many coaches and players confided they wanted to keep the technology but had not dared say it publicly. Many fans articulated the same. And the referees made it clear, in Klaveness’ words, that “it was the point of no return” as far as they were concerned.
“We talked to so many people,” she says. “I’ve heard this accusation that ‘we simply didn’t want to lose the argument’. It’s not even close to the truth. It’s about democracy and, in the end, it was clear the silent majority wanted to keep VAR.”
That is not going to wash with some of the protestors, who are planning another wave of coordinated action next weekend and unveiled protest banners when Norway’s national team played a World Cup 2026 qualifier in Moldova last week.
Yet Klaveness, unlike many football administrators, is a passionate advocate for freedom of speech. She also believes in the right to protest and makes the point that VAR-haters “are still allowed to think it’s bulls**t… we cannot turn against our supporters, we cannot hate the fact they are yelling. They have a very relevant argument”.
She is also determined to meet the relevant people head-on. Two days before the national assembly, Klaveness was at Carls, a pub in Oslo, to meet 200 anti-VAR campaigners from across the country. It was a beery audience and some frank views were exchanged. Did she win over everyone? No, but she maintains it was important to “show respect and demand respect back”. It was, she says, “Very intense.”
Three hours south of Oslo, heading across the border into Sweden, there is a vision of what might have been.
GAIS, one of three Gothenburg clubs in the Swedish top division, are playing AIK in a Monday night fixture at the Gamla Ullevi. It is the first week of the Allsvenskan season and VARs are not even an afterthought.
Sweden’s top flight is the only men’s league among Europe’s top 30 that refuses to use the technology. When a goal is scored, such as AIK’s 92nd-minute winner, it remains a goal. Nobody’s joy is short-lived. Players — and fans — can celebrate without worrying they will be made to look silly.
“It’s so beautiful (without VAR),” says Mikkjal Thomassen, the AIK head coach and former Faroe Islands international, reflecting on his team’s late and dramatic 1-0 victory. “It’s so unspoilt. I’m just a guest in Sweden, but I think it’s a magical decision by Swedish football, even though it’s a little contradictory to where the central organisations are heading in football. Our supporters are really clear that they don’t want VAR and we, as a club, stand 100 per cent behind that.”
In England, when Wolverhampton Wanderers proposed a motion to abolish the VAR system, there was not a single vote of support from the other Premier League teams, even those who had been more vociferous.
Wolves wanted the VAR system abolished in the Premier League (Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images)
Yet the clubs in Sweden, like those in Norway, are run by members, which emboldens fans to take a stand because they have the power to effect change.
“It (VAR) has become a symbol of everything we don’t like about modern football,” says Isak Eden, president of the Swedish Football Supporters’ Union. “My team, Elfsborg, played in Europe last season (with mandatory VAR) and there’s always that feeling when your team scores that you have to hesitate, wait a minute, look three times, or that you might have to celebrate twice. It was completely weird.”
In the first of Elfsborg’s Europa League qualifiers, against Cypriot side Pafos, they were awarded a penalty when the VAR sent the referee to the pitchside monitor.
“We needed to win this game to get through,” says Eden. “Yet the whole stadium was chanting, ‘We hate VAR’. So I can sympathise with the Norwegian supporters. It was a lively debate here, too, but it’s completely dead now and nothing will change in Sweden for the foreseeable future.”
Compare and contrast with the scenes in Norway where anti-VAR slogans are not just displayed on T-shirts and hoodies but also on other items, such as air fresheners and bottle openers.
“It can be strange sometimes,” Ole Selnaes, a Rosenborg player with 32 Norway caps, tells The Athletic. “We are getting used to it, though. We know it’s a hot topic and, if the fans want to stay silent for the first 15 minutes, we have to focus and be professional.”
Do the players want VAR abolished? “Opinion is very mixed,” says Selnaes. “Some do, but some don’t. I can see both sides. Yes, it hasn’t worked perfectly, but we have to remember these are still early days. To me, it would be strange for us to remove VAR if almost everyone else in Europe has it.”
Ole Selnaes (left) has got used to life without VAR for Rosenborg (Ole Martin Wold / NTB/AFP via Getty Images)
“Forsvar Medlemsdemokratiet” (‘Defend Member Democracy’) was the message displayed on banners at several grounds over the weekend.
Yet there is also a backlash against the backlash and, in the land of Erling Haaland and Martin Odegaard, the pro-VAR campaigners are becoming increasingly voluble, too.
In November, Fredrikstad chairman Jostein Lunde put a statement on the club’s website asking for feedback and explaining that “the board was in favour of VAR. ‘I hate f******g VAR’ has echoed throughout the stadium, but what does the entire membership really think?”
Fredrikstad’s members voted 70-65 in favour of the VAR system and Lunde sounds quite proud when he says they were one of only five top-division clubs, with Kristiansund, Sarpsborg 08, KFUM and Bodo/Glimt, to take that stand.
“I have been quite clear that VAR must continue,” says Lunde. “I have tried to be a strong pro-VAR voice because the people who want change tend to speak the loudest, whereas the people who don’t want change are often silent. I got a lot of criticism from different supporters. But the silent majority were too silent for too long.”
Amid all this, the NFF is entitled to point out that Eliteserien has moved up from 23rd in 2019 to 12th in UEFA’s rolling five-year coefficient rankings. Attendances are up. And, VAR or no VAR, the fans put on some show, not least because Norway’s football authorities allow pyrotechnics, which are banned in England and other countries. Fan culture is alive and well here — flags, flares, megaphones, tifos and fashion that Norway’s love of English football has clearly influenced.
But these are unusual times. When the supporters of Bodo/Glimt threw fishcakes on the pitch to disrupt a game against Haugesund, the club banned nine fans for 30 games. “To continue with such childish streaks is to kill football,” Frode Thomassen, the general manager, told TV2. “It’s not about football, not about VAR. I find it incredibly sad and boring.”
Soon afterwards, Bodo/Glimt had an away game against Stromsgodset, whose fans held up two large banners: “Freedom for Ultras” and “Have a fishcake, Frode”.
The challenge for Klaveness is to navigate a way through all this infighting when, by her own admission, it is almost impossible to align everyone’s views. It has not been, she says, a “happy case”.
Anti-VAR sentiment is strong in Norway (Daniel Taylor/The Athletic)
Ultimately, though, she says it has been “the most transparent process in the world” and that referees are grateful they can be spared “sleepless nights and their families getting s**t” because of on-field mistakes that could have been put right.
She believes the VAR system has dramatically improved since its inception and that the good will outweigh the bad if people give it time. And it helps, undoubtedly, that there has not been a major VAR controversy in Norway’s March-to-November season. Not yet, anyway.
“People all across the world are dissatisfied with VAR,” says Klaveness. “Nobody is saying it’s perfect. But it has improved a lot. In its first season in Norway, it disrupted the game. Since the second half of last season, it has had a very good flow.”
It has been 25 years since Norway played in a men’s World Cup or European Championship but last year, the national team was promoted to League A, the top level, in the Nations League.
Klaveness says she is delighted by their upwards trajectory. And she has not forgotten one key detail. “Erling Haaland scored a late goal that was very important,” she says of their 2-1 win against Austria in September. “At first, it was annulled (for offside). Then VAR came along and the goal was allowed. We ended up winning our group. And, oh, what a feeling. Euphoria!”
(Top photo: Justin Tallis, MI News / NurPhoto / Getty Images; design: Will Tullos)
