VAR has become torment – relief has replaced joy

By Simon Leyland

Another game, another welcome three points and another example of why VAR is ruining the game

What was the point of introducing VAR? Well, as you’ll remember, it was to correct glaring errors, wasn’t it? It was to make things more fair.

It has failed on both counts.

When it was sold to us, it was not imagined, let alone expressed that this technology would actually make errors, just as the referees on the pitch always have. It was not made clear that it would be subject to the same vagaries of human fallibility as the on-pitch referee, only transposed to Stockley Park.

No, we were sold a system that would work in a narrow and specific way. But, of course, it hasn’t delivered the brave new world promised and is little more than a bloke in a darkened room looking at a screen with line-drawing software.

VAR has utterly ruined every goal because as soon as the ball goes in the net and everyone starts celebrating, VAR hangs like a curse over proceedings.

Time and again, the atmosphere sinks like a lead balloon and the players start hanging around for up to five minutes, like lost children, waiting for approval from on high.

That cheer when the goal is given, that’s not joy, that’s relief. All the joy of scoring the goal in the first place is now lost. This awful feeling of cynicism when a goal goes in is entirely new, a product of VAR and is against the very spirit of football. Every time a goal is scored, the first thing you do is look at the screen, hoping it won’t turn purple.

It’s a sort of torment

The VAR was only supposed to intervene for absolute howlers – when they think the ref has made a clear and obvious error. But this is simply untrue.

It doesn’t.

How do I know?

Because if it’s taking four minutes to decide whether a mistake has been made, it can’t, de facto, be clear or obvious. Things that are clear and obvious are clear and obvious otherwise you don’t call them clear and obvious, do you?