Africa-Press – Eswatini. The Council of Southern Africa Football Associations (COSAFA) will be introducing a Video Assistant Referee (VAR) system for the Hollywoodbets COSAFA Women’s Championship set for tomorrow to 15, 2023 in Gauteng, South Africa. It is the first time that the renowned system would be used in a COSAFA tournament. From the semi-finals onwards, there are plans to utilise its services in future tournaments. Eswatini Women’s national team, which is widely known as Sitsebe Samhlekazi, left the country on Sunday to compete in the said championship.
VAR is a match official in association football who assists the referee by reviewing decisions using video footage and providing advice to the referee based on those reviews. It is popularly used in English Premier League (EPL) to check for possible errors committed inside the pitch. Worth noting is that Eswatini has only one referee by the name of Leticia Viana, who qualifies to use the system. She became the first liSwati woman to officiate in VAR section of FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup in India over a year ago.
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That was after she became the kingdom’s first female to become a Federation of International Football Association (FIFA)-accredited referee in 2015. Meanwhile, there are about three African countries that implement VAR in their leagues. These are Morocco, Egypt and Zambia. COSAFA Referees Manager Felix Tangawarima is running a five-day all-female course to train referees. Tangawarima confirmed that he will conduct the course which includes theory and practicals. “For a referee to be licensed, they must have had 25 hours of training and we will have a five-day preparatory course. The course includes theory and practicals,” he said.
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