Serie A's VAR Era Begins with Juventus
August 19, 2017: the night Serie A stepped into the VAR age – and, of course, Juventus were the ones dragged to the front of the stage.
The curtain-raiser of the 2017/18 season at the Allianz Stadium looked familiar enough at first. Cagliari in town, Juve already in front thanks to Mario Mandžukić, the champions moving the ball with that early-season swagger. Then, in the 37th minute, something that had always been part of football suddenly belonged to a different era.
Inside the box, Alex Sandro arrived late and clipped Duje Čop off the ball. Referee Fabio Maresca saw it, weighed it up, and waved play on. For a heartbeat, it felt like any other contentious moment in any other Italian match.
Then the earpiece crackled.
Maresca stopped, hand to his ear, and jogged toward the unfamiliar sight by the touchline: the pitchside monitor. Ninety-seven seconds of replays, angles, and tension followed. The crowd shifted from confusion to irritation to curiosity. This was the new world, live and in slow motion.
When Maresca turned back and pointed to the spot, history arrived with a simple gesture. The first VAR-awarded penalty in Serie A. The system designed to strip away doubt had delivered its verdict, and it had gone against Juventus in their own stadium. Symbolic, loaded, exactly the kind of moment Italian football had braced itself for.
But the script didn’t survive contact with Gianluigi Buffon.
Diego Farias placed the ball, knowing the significance, knowing every camera in the country was trained on him. He ran up, struck it cleanly enough – and Buffon, 39 years old and utterly unimpressed by the occasion, read it, moved, and batted the shot away with a routine save. No wild celebration, no theatrics. Just Buffon being Buffon, turning a historic penalty into a minor incident.
The air went out of the controversy. Cagliari’s big chance vanished, Juve’s lead stayed intact, and the champions slipped straight back into cruise control. Paulo Dybala added his name to the scoresheet, Gonzalo Higuaín followed, and a match that had threatened to become a landmark in VAR debate instead settled into a straightforward 3–0 home win.
On paper, that night stands as a technological milestone: the moment Serie A embraced VAR, the moment the system finally promised to catch everything and hold everyone – even Juventus – to account. In reality, the enduring image is different.
It’s Buffon, almost nonchalant, swatting away the penalty that was supposed to define a new era, and turning a grand revolution into just another piece of trivia in a routine Juve victory.
