By Dave Langton
Hughie wrote a very measured piece this morning on bringing in retrospective reviews of results after the VARcical scenes this weekend.
But he’s not gone far enough!
It’s time, now, to bin VAR for good.
What are we gaining from the existence of this joy-sucking technology? We can’t celebrate goals as they go in, for fear of a review chalking it off for an offside or a foul earlier in the play. We might see ridiculous handballs given because the ball brushed the arm of a player.
We’re losing the spirit of the game.
VAR as it is does not exist to help referees. It no longer exists to purely overturn ‘clear and obvious errors’, which was the whole point of it in the first place!
What VAR does instead is try to find a reason to rule out a goal. Look at the Hammers at the weekend. How on earth did anyone in the world think that was a foul on Edouard Mendy? It wasn’t. Chelsea’s players knew it, West Ham’s players knew it, every fan inside Stamford Bridge knew it.
Did the VAR, though? No. Because they slowed the game down to such an extent that it looked as though Jarrod made slight contact with Mendy, so it must have been a foul!
It’s ridiculous.
Part of the joy of football used to be debating decisions. We could all have an argument on the way back from the match, or in the pub, over whether it was offside or not. Yeah, there used to be mistakes, of course there did, but it was human error. You can always forgive human error.
What we can’t forgive is a decision like Saturday, when the humans have the use of technology and STILL GET IT WRONG.
Now we also have to wait three or four minutes for referees to make decisions, and most of the time the fans in the stadium don’t have a clue what’s going on. They are scared of making decisions on the pitch because they know they might be overturned, and it has led to an abdication of responsibility.
If there was an announcement today revealing that VAR was set to be binned off, with immediate effect, there would be no tears, no protestations. Quite simply, there’d be celebrations and revelry. We’d suddenly get our football back as it used to be.
It’s unlikely, though, and it might make more sense to actually introduce an appeals system. Let the managers decide when moments get reviewed, give them three challenges per game, and allow them to call VAR’s shot, meaning the technology stays out of most decisions.
That adds a strategic element and is a lot more sensible than the over-reach we’re getting now.
Still, the fact remains: Football was better without VAR. You never know what you’ve got until it’s ruined.
If you have one guy making the decisions on VAR , you are always going to get errors. Tuchel, who is obviously biased towards his team , says it was a foul , as he thinks his goalkeepers antics were convincing enough to con .
There are millions of pounds at stake.
What it needs is an odd number of VAR officials, at least 5 of them as it’s a subjective view , not a fact like the goal line technology is ( like judging officials for boxing / ice skating or diving ) to officiate on VAR.
They all need to separately vote on ‘goal/no goal’ / ‘pen/no pen’ “offside/not offside’ and go with the majority.. you will not get these errors then.
I agree with everything you say here but VAR is unfortunately here to stay.
It’s just enforced by faceless biased individuals who play god and will cost clubs millions by the decisions made.
The way the game is going why go to games when the highlights don’t show the 5 minutes for each decision/goal to be dissected to constantly find a reason not to allow a goal. Why am I not surprised that many of these decisions rarely go against one of the supposed top six?
A good idea but it wouldn’t work. It takes long enough with one on VAR. If there was a debate between 5 every time games would last hours.
The only way I can ever see if being truly unbiased an subject to the whims of individuals is to remove that element entirely.
A.I. is developed enough now to be able to do this job. Easy to implement 100% correct calls and 100% consistency.
I have said this since the beginning, it should be limited appeal based like in cricket. A decision by the captain within a time limit. And stop with this calling the ref over to watch one angle in slow mo.
Whenever there is lack of transparency in society there will always be situations within which a human being can be open to external forces when asked to make judgement. Add to that the removal of accountability for ones decisions too and the ground becomes fertile for the seeds of manipulative control to germinate. It’s everywhere you look in society so why wouldn’t it be rife in football too. I don’t for one minute believe these decisions were to do human error otherwise every pundit across the land wouldn’t be in agreement that the goals for us and Newcastle should have stood.
If referees (both on the pitch and Video Assistant) were made to write reports on the games they are officiating (that were available to football clubs), including the explanation of decisions of major incident, and were judged on their officiating, possibly demoted for a week to lower league games for making clear errors like they did this past weekend, might that stop the inconsistency in decision making (or corruption/bias)?
Lovely answer, Saul, and some great points.
I suspect they do write reports, but they’re hidden with the closed shop of the PGMOL. We will never see them because it risks the integrity of the ‘gentlemens club’ mentality they appear to have.
Also, it relates to the argument for putting microphones on refs, so we can hear. And showing what the VAR is seeing on big screens within the stadium. It’s not in their interests.
For some reason, those who ‘run’ football have always felt superior to the common man – all the way back to the amateur game in the 1800’s – so we shouldn’t be surprised that they’re reluctant to ‘open up’ to the masses, concede control and be transparent and accountable.
The question is; whose game is this? The masses, or the few?
V.A.R Will always be used as it has been since its introduction to protect the so called big 6
Those referee’s at the weekend are not fit to ref non league games let alone high profile premiership games
VAR is an excellent tool just badly handled. Lest we forget we would have had a penalty against st us in the Spuds game. So no, we just need people to use it much more effectively.
Completely agree. I was about to make the point about the Spurs game too.
It’s not the technology’s fault, but the way it’s applied.
You need a ref, a manager and a player sitting there, all seeing the same screen for no more than 30 seconds. No slow-motion – just real time, like the ref saw it (otherwise it’s not clear and obvious, is it?) After 30 seconds, the three vote yes or no and theres NO debate – they just get to make their decision. That spreads the pressure and will lead to better decisions.
There are a lot of valid viewpoints regarding VAR here. I’m not sure that I agree with some of cfautley@gmail.com ideas though. Having 5 VAR officials sounds like your worst nightmare. As John McEnroe might say “You cannot be serious!”. I mean, how long would the decision time drag out to then – over 5 minutes? No, I don’t think it’s a good idea.
I think I would prefer VAR to be stripped back to judge clear and obvious errors but hand most of the decisions back to the referee and line officials. As others have said, the VAR officials seem to have got it into their heads that they must systematically look for any reason to disallow each goal now. This is killing our game!
I feel that VAR technology is a good idea but currently mismanaged. Why? Because they have changed rules that don’t need changing, like handball, offside needs a definition for the ‘lines’ like a foot on the ground for example, cut the ambiguity that they have introduced. Secondly, the VAR should be more than one individual, a panel, because just now it is another ref once removed with an opinion. Third and crucial is transparency, like both rugby and cricket. Introduce microphones, understand the question, the check and the reason. Keep the crowd and teams informed and keep the ref and VAR team accountable and consistent
Spot on.