Video reviews have changed the face of European soccer. One country is holding out

STOCKHOLM (AP) — As the Swedish league got underway this spring, yellow-and-black-clad supporters of Stockholm club AIK held up an enormous banner containing a long, vivid story about the dark forces of modern soccer conquering the world.

“The whole world? No!" read the words on the giant display. ”There was, in fact, a small area that successfully resisted the intruders, surrounded by modern football’s smoldering ruins.”

The intruder in this case is VAR — the high-tech video review system formally written into the laws of soccer in 2018 to help referees make the right calls in the biggest moments.

While most leagues around the world are now using this technology, Sweden is an outlier in holding out and, in its view, retaining the game in its purest form.

The Swedish league is the only one of Europe’s top-30 ranked leagues yet to have rolled out the system. It won’t be happening anytime soon, either.

“VAR is a symbol of modern, commercialized-to-the-point-of-destruction football,” says Ola Thews, vice-chairman of AIK’s largest supporter organization, ASK.

Thews is more than just a die-hard AIK fan. He played a part in mobilizing anti-VAR sentiment among Sweden’s top clubs and helped push through a motion at AIK opposing the introduction of the technology, before the Swedish soccer federation had the chance to bring it in.

That’s possible because Swedish clubs are majority-controlled by members — essentially, supporters — under a regulation that states members should control at least 50% of their club’s shares, plus one.

Although the federation initially appeared to want VAR in operation — the technology is, after all,...