Instant replay is on its way into professional soccer.
On Wednesday we saw the first-ever decision by the "video assistant referee." It happened in a match at the FIFA Club World Cup between Colombian side Atlético Nacional and the Japanese champions Kashima Antlers. A Kashima player was run over in the penalty area, but the referees originally decided that he had been offside at the time. After being alerted by the video assistant, referee Viktor Kassai trotted over to a monitor on the side of the field and overturned his own decision based on video evidence, retroactively awarding Kashima a penalty.
Soon we'll see the same sort of thing in Major League Soccer. Commissioner Don Garber announced last week that a similar system will be used in the first half of next season. The video assistant will be able to look at replays and alert the center referee of mistakes on goals, red cards, penalty decisions or cases in which the referee might have punished the incorrect player.
Overall, I'm in favor of this system. Soccer is dragged down by all manner of attempts to deceive the referee, whether diving in the penalty area or exaggerating fouls in hopes of getting the opposition punished. Setting aside ad hominem attacks about cheating players, the worst thing about the cheating is that it works. A penalty or a red card changes a game irretrievably, and punishment for dives is rare. Giving an eye in the sky the power to get the decision correct — and punish cheaters as well, in a perfect world — will level the playing field, and reduce the benefit of diving. That said, you only have to look at other sports to realize that, once this power is granted to referees, it immediately changes their approach. It's natural that they begin to depend on the technology and start to use the video monitor for everything. Why make a contentious call on the field when you can take a look on video and remove all doubt? The game then slows to a crawl, with the referee making endless trips to the monitor. Pretty quickly everyone involved is checking their watch, wondering when soccer games started to take three hours to finish.
Other sports have taken the power from referees and instead given coaches and players the power to challenge. But that causes even more slowdowns. Every close play in baseball is now followed by immediate time-wasting as the manager perches on the top step of the dugout, waiting to find out from his video team whether he should run onto the field and challenge a call.
Soccer is trying to combat this by keeping the video assistant removed from the play and having that person buzz the center referee only in extreme cases. Here's hoping it works. Getting contentious calls right would be a good thing, overall, but only if it doing so doesn't ruin the rest of the game along the way.
SHORT TAKES

• Here's hoping that Woodbury native Kassey Kallman's new National Womens Soccer League team works out for her. Kallman was traded by Boston, the league's worst team, to Washington, the league's regular-season champion. The Spirit, though, already have dealt three key pieces from last year's team, including USWNT star Ali Krieger.