Football’s lawmaking body has urged the English Premier League and other competitions to all follow the same rules on the involvement of Video Assistant Referee (VAR) technology. 

The move comes after concern that the premier league and Bundesliga in particular were applying different interpretations over the use of Var than the ones handed out by international football association board (IFAB), Fifa’s rule-making body.

Competitions have been urged to respect the laws of the game and any of the IFAB’s published/communicated guidelines and/or clarifications.

On Wednesday, IFAB issued a circular on the recent changes in laws, including the issue of the use of Var in the taking of penalty kicks.

The premier league and Bundesliga have opted to leave the decision over whether a goalkeeper had moved off the line to on-field officials with Var only intervening if there is a clear mistake by the officials.

But IFAB have insisted that Var “must check for any offence by the goalkeeper (and/or the kicker) and the Var must inform the referee if there is clear replay evidence.

However, the lawmaking body said that Var should not be used as a means for referees to routinely check their own decisions and reiterated that any use of the system should only be when there has been a “clear and obvious” error.