There isn’t much going on around the turn of the year in the Center for School Quality and Teacher Training (ZSL) in Stuttgart, but Pascal Müller has still reserved a room just to be on the safe side. Müller, 35, works as a speaker at the ZSL, which is responsible, among other things, for the training and further education of teachers in Baden-Württemberg, but he also has a second interesting job: for the past six years, the former second division referee has been sitting as a Video Assistant Referee (VAR for short) in the famous and sometimes infamous Cologne cellar almost every weekend. Müller is considered one of the world’s best specialists who, without a parallel career as a field referee, concentrates exclusively on work in the VAR center. He has now made a name for himself across Europe and is also used as VAR in the Champions League. So who would be better suited than Pascal Müller to answer all the pressing questions that the still controversial video referee has raised since its introduction in the 2017/18 season? A look into the cellar.
