PETALING JAYA, Sept 1 — The cost of renting the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) system and appointing a foreign referee qualified to manage the technology during the 2023 Malaysia Cup final would be too high, Malaysian Football League (MFL) chief executive officer Datuk Stuart Ramalingam said today.

He said that the league planned to use local expertise and needed to spend wisely to implement the use of VAR in the Malaysia League (M-League), and the use of VAR in the final would be determined after the completion of a VAR course involving local referees in December.

"The main constraints are limited budget and resources. VAR has not been used since the first time during the 2022 Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Cup final in Bukit Jalil and I believe that the AFC spent over a hundred thousand to rent and install the VAR there. So, we need to be prudent to implement it right,” he said at a media conference at Wisma FAM, Kelana Jaya here today.

The suggestion to rent the VAR and appoint a foreign referee for the Malaysia Cup final was brought up after Stuart previously said that there were issues with using VAR, including infrastructure, internet coverage and the availability of local referees.

Stuart, together with Football Association of Malaysia (FAM) secretary-general Datuk Noor Azman Rahman, had earlier visited the second phase of VAR training session involving 40 local referees and 14 relay operators here.

"On FAM’s side, we just prepare referees — 20 referees, 20 assistant referees and 14 relay operators — all of them will undergo three phases of courses, which is currently at the second phase.

"The third phase is in November and December, then we will wait for Fifa’s assessment of our suggested referees in March next year,” Noor Azman said. — Bernama