Personally I think VAR overreached with the goal and it is now going to be covered up by IFAB and the refs. Yes the rule has been in place for years and contrary to what people seem to be saying it is actually consistently enforced... by the referees on the field. If you look over the last few years you will commonly see the team taking a freekick making a second wall in front of the main wall or a referee marking the 1m gap. These are both changes from this rule and I think show that players and managers are aware of the rule and do act on it. I was definitely aware of the rule before yesterday and remember seeing it in action many times so I have no doubt that the players etc were aware of it.
However prior to yesterday I don't believe VAR has ever gotten involved as I believe they thought it was outside of VARs remit. The rule states:
'Where three or more defending team players form a ‘wall’, all attacking team players must remain at least 1 m (1 yd) from the ‘wall’ until the ball is in play.'
That last bit is key I believe as previously it has been interpreted as an issue before the restart has happened and therefore not reviewable by VAR, in the same way VAR will not review if a throw in or freekick was taken from the correct spot. That seems to have changed yesterday and I think the key question is whether the change came from IFAB as new interpretations distributed to referees before the season started. Personally I do not believe this is the case, I think what has happened is the VAR in this match was not aware of the previous interpretation so has incorrectly gotten VAR involved and by doing so has changed this interpretation. I suspect they will now of course get backing from VAR and IFAB who will claim this was always the correct interpretation however if you look at the information given out previously by VAR on incorrect decisions, they have never once included one of these fouls as an incorrect decision and I highly doubt they are now going to go back and retroactively announce they were wrong. I'm afraid the most likely course of action going forward is VAR saying they got the interpretation correct in this match and then forgetting about it come the next match of the season but I hope I am wrong.