​Torbjorn Heggem was the first to react this past Saturday when the rebound of a teammate’s close-range shot dropped invitingly in the six-yard box.The Norway defender stuck out his left foot and poked the ball into the roof of the wide-open net to seemingly give his team a 2-1 second-half lead over England in a World Cup quarterfinal.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementHeggem sprang to his feet with his arms outstretched looking for someone to hug. Teammates dashed in Heggem’s direction and mobbed him near the corner. It was a moment of exhilaration for a nation that has never made a deep World Cup run before … until French referee Clément Turpin signaled that replay officials had asked him to go to a pitchside TV monitor to reexamine the buildup to the goal.Replays showed that Norway’s hulking superstar Erling Haaland had shoved England midfielder Elliot Anderson in the chest and sent him sprawling to the grass, preventing him from competing for position on the corner kick that led to the goal. Turpin ruled that was enough to disallow Norway’s go-ahead goal even though Haaland was not involved in the play and Anderson appeared to go down a bit softly.That was one of two video assistant referee (VAR) decisions that left Norway fuming after its 2-1 loss to England in extra time. The Norwegians also unsuccessfully argued that VAR should have intervened to disallow Jude Bellingham’s equalizing goal late in the first half because the ball appeared to strike an overhead camera cable right before the attack started.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement”We didn’t get much help from the referee,” Norway captain Martin Odegaard told reporters after the match.That was diplomatic compared to a pair of posts on X from Haaland’s father.”Well done Bellingham and referee,” Alf-Inge Haaland wrote Saturday, referring to Bellingham’s two-goal performance.Later, in response to an English Journalist, the elder Haaland added: “Saved by the referee. Hope you win the WC now. But feel we got robbed today.”The defining story of this summer’s World Cup hasn’t always been the age-defying goal scoring of Lionel Messi, the fairytale magic of Cape Verde or the relentless inevitability of France. Debate over whether soccer’s instant replay technology is being used as intended has often dominated the conversation after controversial or inconsistent VAR decisions altered the course of high-profile matches.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThere were already more than 100 instances of VAR confirming a referee’s call or overturning it by the end of the round of 16, according to Antonio Vuksanović, a public relations professional at the Croatian sports technology and advanced statistics site, Sofascore.com. Roughly 0.5 decisions per match have been overturned, per Vuksanovic, which he says “is higher than the last World Cup and higher than what we saw across the most recently completed club season.”Discontentment with the current VAR system might be the only thing tha