Time to bin VAR for good

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.