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Joe Dickerson never set out to be a referee. As a player, he was told that reffing would be to make money on the side, learn responsibility, and – more pertinent to his team – learn the sport and begin to understand it on a granular level.
Those early assignments in the San Jose area have blossomed into a career that saw Dickerson honored as US Soccer’s male referee of the year in 2025. All of it has been driven by his ability to drill into details – something he’ll be doing a lot of as a VAR official in the replay booth for this summer’s World Cup.
“There was a time when early in my career – and part of this goes through today: I hate going to the monitor,” Dickerson told the Guardian. “I hate it because it means I’ve probably made a mistake and I want to be perfect on the field.”
Over time, Dickerson has learned to stop worrying and, if not love, tolerate the monitor. And that’s a good thing. He’ll be dealing with it plenty in the VAR booth at stadiums around North America this summer.
As one of many officials worldwide observed by Fifa throughout the World Cup cycle, Dickerson was in contention for either center officiating or video work for the tournament. He’ll be a voice in the ear of the referee to notify them of contentious plays being checked. He’ll call up those replays to help the official. He said the same initial reluctance to use the monitor will help him get the tone right as he asks a game’s official to take a second look.
“The vast majority of mistakes made at a World Cup by the best referees in the world are minor,” Dickerson said. “Well, minor’s the wrong word; they’re really difficult. They’re subtle, specific, or they were really hard to see. These are the ones that nobody ever faults referees for missing.”
Outside his day job, Dickerson is working on his master’s degree at the University of Chicago. His thesis will be on Machiavelli’s political philosophy, and he expects to do a case study on how it relates to refereeing. The link may seem odd to some, but it is evident from his vantage point.
“The short version is, I think Machiavelli makes a case for empathy and leadership through some hidden teachings in his otherwise very amoral pragmatism in his writing,” Dickerson said. “I also really like Nietzsche and Confucius. The reason I bring that up is because I think that a lot of these things that we learn in refereeing are very philosophical, and they can apply to many aspects of life.”
Indeed, VAR has been at the center of a philosophical debate within soccer circles almost since its introduction. But that criticism has become more common in the last year, with a series of contentious moments becoming subplots of title races and battles of promotion and relegation. In February, Uefa’s director of refereeing warned that the process was getting “too microscopic”. By the end of the European club season, the Premier League had voted against extending VAR’s power to include potential corner kicks, which will be part of this World Cup’s checks at Fifa’s request.
Dickerson sees the inherent differences between international and club football as working in the referees’ favor for this World Cup. In a league season, there are so many games over a series of months that any outliers will remain lightning rods.
“All Fifa events, and specifically the World Cups, are unique in that they are tournaments,” Dickerson said, “and they are highly visible, very short tournaments.”
A decade into the sport’s VAR era, the most contentious calls without obvious determination are handballs, times when one player wins the ball before making contact with an opponent and moments when attackers initiate contact to try drawing a whistle. These are closely examined by every World Cup referee in a montage at refereeing seminars, the most recent one of which took place in Brazil.
“We do a 10-day seminar to make sure that we are as consistent as can possibly be on all the decisions,” Dickerson said. “We know that 90-something percent of the decisions we will see at the World Cup, we will consider almost black and white, even if the footballing public doesn’t. We have spent so much time looking at all of these clips so we know ‘that’s a handball’, ‘that’s a penalty’, ‘that’s a red card’, ‘that’s a yellow card’.”
These days, VAR booth operations involve three officials: the video assistant referee, who is in the referee’s ear communicating throughout the match; a support VAR to continue monitoring while the VAR is reviewing a potential contentious call; and an assistant VAR who keeps notes that the VAR is unable to jot down while monitoring. Each member has undergone identical training, allowing the trio to assess a possible review with the benefit of a second and third opinion in the room.
You may not like video review. A center official may not either. But regardless of that, it’s safe to expect that VAR will be a subplot of this World Cup.
“You can’t eliminate the public’s bias from any analysis of VAR,” Dickerson said, “and that’s not a bad thing. I love going to stadiums that I would consider are hostile, because it tells me that the fans are incredibly passionate about the game. I think that’s one of the beautiful things about the sport.
“The other beautiful thing about the sport is the subjectivity. When you combine subjectivity with inherent bias and high emotions, you get a lot of strong opinions about things like VAR decisions.”
