For years, the debate on technology has taken over the world of football. Is technology good for football? Can technology help football eradicate the errors made by referees? Why isn’t technology already in use like it is in Cricket, Rugby or the NFL? These are all questions we have asked over the past decade and all of the questions are reasonable. .
In the real world, technology has been embraced and used all the time, so why is the acceptance level low in football?
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When looking at VAR, an abbreviation of Video Assistant Referee, you need to look at how it can help the game and how it can make the matches the fairest they can be. I’m sure we have all questioned a referee’s decision in a match and we all know who is deemed a competent referee and who isn’t, but we can all agree that for years they have needed help with their calls.
How can we expect Mike Dean to make a perfect penalty decision when he’s 20 yards away from the incident with the game going way too quick for him to make a split second decision?
VAR can help referees, as goal line technology has. Even when that was introduced, people still complained and used the same lines they do when talking about VAR. Fans and pundits would regularly complain that “it’ll take away the spirit of the game”, “we won’t have anything to debate down the pub” and “it takes away from the drama, it makes it too perfect” which is complete and utter nonsense.
Also read: VAR is the future, insists FIFA president Infantino
Why does drama in a game matter? If there isn’t “drama” in a game, is it boring? No, of course it isn’t but if you introduce the evil VAR system, we may as well pack our bags and stop playing. At least, that’s what some pundits and fans want you to think.
At the time of writing, VAR is being trial tested in the Confederations Cup in Russia, ahead of it’s use in multiple leagues in Europe and of course, in the 2018 World Cup and the trial test has gotten off to a rocky start, to say the least.
One of the biggest complaints about the VAR is that we have no idea what is being reviewed at times. I am a huge advocate for the use of VAR, but even I will admit that not showing the fans in the stadium and the fans at home what is going on will only lead to mass confusion and condemnation of the system.
During the match between Portugal and Mexico, Pepe had a goal ruled out for Portugal for offside and whilst it was the correct decision, we had absolutely no idea what was going on. We didn’t know what was being reviewed and quite frankly, it was in shambles.
All it would take is a line of communication between the reviewers and the referee along with the video replay shown and all confusion is gone. When that problem is solved, there is nothing that can realistically be argued against the system.
The introduction of VAR can only be positive to the world of football as we have seen how well it works in other sports, so why would football be any different? Does it ruin the flow of the game? Absolutely not, as once the system is worked on, it will take a maximum of 30 seconds to solve a decision.
I’ve seen people discuss how it would rule on issues like when a player scores a goal but is ruled offside and everyone around them stops. It is ridiculous to try and base the validity of VAR on something so trivial. If you start to create unusual situations to argue against VAR, that essentially means you cannot find a reasonable, realistic argument.
You see a lot of pundits doing the same thing as well. Paul Ince went on ITV Sport to say he doesn’t like it because it “doesn’t give you anything to talk about down the pub” and Danny Higginbotham is very much against the idea for various reasons, but why? Why wouldn’t you want decisions to be right?
Is it because pundits can’t actually analyse football matches without criticising the referee and hiding behind mistakes instead of analytically looking at a team’s performance? It’s lazy to not want VAR because it ruins talking points, because in 90 minutes there are multiple talking points, just nothing easy for lazy pundits to find.
Ultimately, VAR can only be a positive in football. The world changes and so does sport, especially football. There was outcry when they changed the back pass rule and we got through that, there was outcry when they introduced goal-line technology and we managed to implement that perfectly into our game, so why not VAR? People are scared of change, but this is change that is desperately needed.
We can’t have perfect games in terms of refereeing decisions, but by using VAR, we can get as close as humanly possible to being correct the majority of times during a 90 minute period.
