I am deliberately writing this ahead of the biggest Premier League game in a couple of years, with Liverpool going to Manchester City on Sunday in a much-vaunted ‘title decider’. (I don’t think it will decide the title, but it will certainly have an impact.) I might or might not anticipate Anthony Taylor making a very contentious decision on the dubious advice of Paul Tierney, but it’s better to consider the merits or otherwise of video assistant referees (VAR) in the cold light of day than in a post-match rage.
Like a lot of people, I was strongly in favour of VAR when it was introduced. I had seen too many appalling decisions decide football matches, the goal line technology had already been a successful innovation and we had seen technology used effectively in sports like cricket and tennis. Who could object to referees having the benefit of slow motion replays to decide whether there had been a foul or an offside? While some things may still be open to interpretation, the rules only corrected ‘clear and obvious’ errors. meaning, surely, that the real travesties would become a thing of the past and we could go back to talking about the game, not the officials?
It hasn’t quite worked out like that. If anything, in the English Premier League at least, VAR has shone a light on a level of refereeing incompetence that we perhaps always suspected, and made the ineptitude of most of our officials very clear and obvious. If someone who is paid to officiate football matches can’t see, with the benefit of replays from all angles, what is blatantly obvious to most people watching, then they are in the wrong job. But again and again, this has happened. I’m not going to list examples here – most of mine probably relate to my own team and you’ll have your own grievances. But it’s incredible how often pundits end up talking about poor decisions made with the benefit of VAR. This is less the case in European or international games, so does sadly reflect that most of our refs are way below par.
“Don’t blame the tech, blame the officials’ is a regular and in some ways justifiable response. If we don’t get as many appalling decisions from overseas refs, isn’t it time to put our house in order, get rid of the worst offenders and maybe import better officials as we have with players? All true. But that doesn’t take away an even bigger gripe.
The worst thing about VAR is not even the embarrassingly bad decisions our referees are making with the benefit of replays. The worst thing is the effect on the spectator experience. Long delays while they look at every angle or the referee goes over to the pitchside monitor are one frustration. Refusal to flag obvious offsides as a when they happen is universally detested (and will sooner or later lead to an injury and a change to a rule we all hate). But the biggest travesty is the impact on the best moments in football: your team scoring a goal.
This is much more compelling case against VAR than rubbish refs. When a goal goes in now, you can’t celebrate, at least not in the way you once did. I know disallowed goals are not new. But we all got used to looking quickly for a linesman’s flag, or the ref pointing to the centre circle, on our way up out of our seats. Now there might be another intervention, maybe going back to a foul in the build up to the goal, or a fraction of body hair being offside. This makes that explosion of joy at a goal, especially an important one, far less likely. Part of you is already trying to second guess the half competent guy watching the game and looking for a reason to rule the goal out.
On this basis alone, VAR everywhere is a failure. I’d take the odd marginal offside, push in the back or whatever in return for the joy of the goal. If play hasn’t been stopped at the time, raking back over what the players were doing last week to try to disallow the goal is the epitome of joyless officialdom.
Football is a simple game – anyone can play it in a park if they have a ball or something passing for one. It’s already being over-complicated by bizarre rule changes, money-driven changes to the formats of much-loved competitions and sports-washing owners with bottomless funds undermining its competitiveness. I don’t think the addition of another variable like VAR – whether or not it is made worse by inept application – has in any way enhanced football as a sport. There may be a marginal improvement in decisions – even that is debatable in England – but what’s been lost outweighs any perceived gain: the most exciting part of the game for fans has been fatally undermined.
It’s time to VAR the whole VAR concept. Decision: failure.
Rory writes 