Before a ball is even kicked in this season's German Cup, supporter groups have already made their position clear: they want VAR gone, and they're willing to make some noise to prove it.
A statement circulating among fanbases ahead of this weekend's first-round fixtures lays it out plainly. "We see football as it should be in the first round of the cup getting underway now — without VAR and thus authentic, immediate, and full of emotion. We want to return to this state permanently and therefore call for the abolition of the video assistant referee in German football."
That's not a fringe view anymore. Nine years into the VAR experiment, the frustration has curdled into something more organised.
Why the Cup's first round matters here
There's an accidental poetry to the timing. The German Cup's first round — with 64 teams involved — won't use VAR this weekend for technical and financial reasons. Fans are treating it as proof of concept: look, football still works without it. From the second round onwards, VAR returns, with expanded powers this season. Referees' video assistants will now be able to intervene on unjustified second yellow cards and correct cases where the wrong player is cautioned or sent off.
Which means this weekend is a window. Fans know it. And if previous protests are anything to go by, they'll use it.
German supporters have form here. Tennis balls have rained onto pitches. Last season's German Cup final was played through a haze of smoke from fans' fireworks. These aren't spontaneous outbursts — they're coordinated statements, and the groups behind them know how to get attention.
What this means beyond the protests
Eintracht Frankfurt and Stuttgart open the weekend's action against lower-league opposition, and both sets of fans will have eyes on how the games flow without VAR's interruptions. The irony is that a clean, fast-paced first round will only strengthen the anti-VAR argument. Every goal that stands, every free-flowing move uninterrupted by a three-minute review, becomes ammunition.
The German Football Association has doubled down on VAR — expanding its scope, not shrinking it. That gap between the governing body and a growing portion of the fanbase isn't getting smaller. "Even fans who were initially open to and positive about the innovation now acknowledge, after nine years, that VAR has fundamentally altered the character of the game," the fans' statement reads.
Hard to argue they're wrong about the altered character part. Whether that alteration is worth it is the question German football still can't agree on — and this weekend, the argument moves off social media and back into the stadiums.
