The first Europa League matchday did not produce wall-to-wall VAR controversy. It did, however, give us one very difficult non-intervention, two goals overturned in the same match and a penalty-area incident at Sunderland that looked strangely familiar.
The biggest argument came in Brussels, where Anderlecht were chasing an equaliser against Lyon and wanted a late penalty for an off-the-ball incident involving Mihajlo Cvetkovic and Clinton Mata.
VAR checked it. The referee was never sent to the monitor.
That decision has already drawn criticism from a former international referee and raises the question that keeps following VAR from one competition to another: when does a debatable decision become clear enough for the video officials to step in?
Anderlecht 1-2 Lyon: why did VAR stay out?
Anderlecht were 2-1 down and pushing for an equaliser when the most controversial incident of the opening round arrived late in the game.
Mihajlo Cvetkovic and Clinton Mata were inside the Lyon penalty area, away from where the ball was being played. Mata made contact with the Anderlecht forward and Cvetkovic went down.
Referee Ricardo de Burgos Bengoetxea did not award a penalty.
The incident did not simply disappear. VAR looked at it while play was stopped, but the check ended without an on-field review and the original decision stood.
That distinction matters. The video officials were not deciding whether they personally would have awarded a penalty. They were deciding whether the referee had made a clear and obvious error by allowing play to continue.
Former Belgian international referee Alexandre Boucaut strongly disagreed with the outcome. His view was that Mata had no realistic interest in playing the ball and that the contact was sufficient for a penalty. He was particularly critical of VAR for not asking the referee to take another look.
It is easy to see why the incident became the main refereeing talking point from the match. The contact happens away from the ball, at a moment when the referee and assistants naturally have their attention elsewhere.
That is exactly where supporters expect VAR to offer something the referee on the pitch cannot: another set of eyes.
But seeing an incident is not the same as being allowed to re-referee it. For subjective penalty decisions, the original call still carries considerable weight. VarVote has a fuller explanation of that distinction in our guide to when VAR can actually intervene.
The Anderlecht incident sits right on that fault line.
Was the contact enough for a penalty? And even if another referee would have given one, was the no-call clearly wrong enough for VAR to intervene?
Those are two different questions.
For Anderlecht, the practical consequence was much simpler. They were one goal down, inside the final minutes, and did not get the chance to equalise from the spot.
Sturm Graz 0-0 Rennes: VAR removes a goal at both ends
There was far less ambiguity in Graz.
Rennes thought they had taken an early lead when Adrien Thomasson found the net. The celebrations did not last. VAR identified a handball in the attacking sequence and the goal was disallowed.
Later in the first half, Sturm Graz thought they had gone in front themselves.
Paul-Friedrich Koller put the ball past Brice Samba, but another review followed. This time the issue was offside. Koller had moved marginally too early and the goal was ruled out.
Two teams. Two goals. Two VAR interventions. Still 0-0.
That was also the final score.
There is an obvious contrast with what happened in Brussels. The two incidents in Graz involved offences directly connected to goals, so VAR had a clear route into both decisions. The handball and offside could be reviewed as part of the goal-checking process.
Once the relevant offence had been established, there was much less room for interpretation about what happened next.
That does not make the technology popular with the player who has just celebrated a goal. It does make the process considerably easier to understand.
Sturm's own post-match report acknowledged both moments: Rennes' apparent opener was removed for handball after VAR intervention, while Koller's goal was disallowed for a very tight offside.
The match eventually finished without a goal that counted, despite both teams having put the ball in the net before half-time.
Sunderland 1-0 AZ: haven't we just seen this with Dan Ballard?
Sunderland's return to European football produced a win, a penalty for Enzo Le Fee and another penalty-area incident involving Dan Ballard.
It was the Ballard incident that caught our attention.
Only four days earlier, Ballard had been at the centre of one of the Premier League weekend's biggest penalty debates.
Against Arsenal, Ballard and Ezri Konsa became locked together inside the penalty area. Referee John Brooks penalised Konsa and awarded Sunderland a penalty. VAR checked the decision and allowed it to stand.
The decision was controversial because the contact went both ways and there was disagreement over who initiated it. We covered all of the major incidents from that match in our Sunderland v Arsenal VAR review.
Then came AZ.
Another physical penalty-area duel involving Ballard ended very differently. This time there was no penalty and play continued.
The incidents are not identical, and treating them as though they are would miss the difficult part of the debate. The nature of the contact, who initiates it and how much it affects the opponent all matter.
But seeing the two incidents only a few days apart makes the comparison difficult to ignore.
One produced a penalty that survived a VAR check. The other produced nothing.
Rather than repeat the whole argument here, we have put the two incidents together so they can be judged side by side: Similar contact. Different decisions. Were these decisions consistent?
That comparison is probably more useful than trying to declare either incident a carbon copy of the other.
It also gets at one of the hardest parts of VAR. Consistency does not necessarily mean that similar-looking contact must always produce the same decision. But when the outcomes are different, supporters are entitled to ask what the meaningful difference was.
Real Sociedad 1-2 Bournemouth: a historic goal survives the check
Not every VAR check needs a controversy attached to it.
Justin Kluivert scored after 11 minutes in San Sebastian to give Bournemouth the first European goal in the club's history.
Before that piece of history could be confirmed, the goal went through a VAR check.
It stood.
Kluivert's goal therefore offers a useful counterpoint to the rest of this review. Most VAR checks happen without an overturn, an on-field review or a week-long argument about what the referee should have done.
The video officials check the incident, find no reason to change the decision and the game continues.
Bournemouth went on to win 2-1, making their first European goal part of their first European victory.
The harder VAR decisions are still the subjective ones
The opening Europa League round provided two very different versions of VAR.
In Graz, the system found a handball and an offside connected to goals. Both goals were removed. The decisions were important, but the reason for the interventions was relatively straightforward.
In Brussels, everyone could see the contact between Mata and Cvetkovic once the replay was shown. That did not settle the decision.
The question became whether the contact was enough for a penalty, and then whether the referee's original decision was wrong enough for VAR to intervene.
Sunderland added another layer to the same problem. Two similar-looking physical contests involving Ballard, played only days apart, ended with completely different outcomes.
That does not automatically mean one of the decisions was wrong.
It does explain why the debate around VAR increasingly comes back to consistency and intervention thresholds rather than the quality of the cameras.
The factual decisions are getting easier to identify.
The judgement calls are not.