The whole madness around VAR recently has been very frustrating for pretty much everyone, and we’ve seen all sorts of suggestions on what needs to be done. One of them is to abolish VAR, we’ve heard it from both pundits and fans.
I’ve been thinking about it and I believe this simply can’t work for one forgotten reason: we now have so many camera angles and sophisticated technologies, that everyone sees when the referee got it wrong.
It was different 15 or even 10 years. You would still get replays and the obvious mistakes would cause frustration, but a good chunk of fairly close decisions like tight offsides and situations with some contact that are hard to evaluate would be hard to dissect like we do it today.
We used to get a quick and inconclusive replay that was rarely enough to judge with conviction. Combine that with the real-time decisions in a fast-paced sport by the referees that are often hard (the decisions, not the referees), and the benefit of the doubt was intact most of the time. Every fan would be unhappy and occasionally frustrated enough to question the integrity of the sport, but these moments would be the exception, not the norm.
We can’t have the same luxury nowadays. All the replays from a bazillion angles and drones, offside technologies, etc allow us to instantly see every single time the referees got it wrong. If we can see it within a minute most of the time, there’s no excuse for them not to use technologies and there will always be frustration going forward, unless VAR is used better and the referees improve.
If VAR is poor, people will be frustrated with the number of mistakes. If there’s no VAR, people will be again frustrated with the number of mistakes because we have the technology to prevent more of them. There’s no other solution but to improve VAR’s efficiency and the referees’ decisions as a whole.
Honestly, I see it as the only way going forward, but am I missing something? What do you think would happen if VAR is abolished?
Try taking this subject to the Wolves sub.
I am sure they have a strong opinion on the matter.
There is only one real aspect to this: millions have been invested, people stand to lose investments and profits, deals have been made.
Whether people like VAR or not, this train won’t be stopped.
All hail the weekly 5 “was it a penalty” discussions and 3-5 minute lag on goal celebrations. It boggles the mind that so many of you seem to actually welcome VAR.
I don’t think you can move backwards now. We’d be even more angry every week when calls get missed.
Here’s the fundamental flaw with VAR. even when things are studied in super zoom and super slow motion people still can’t come to a consensus on the right call. There’s no fixing that. What one person considers reckless or dangerous, another person may not. Even in binary situations like out of bounds or offside there are plenty of examples of situations where we can’t definitively know.
The thing var is based on, “correct” calls, just doesn’t exist.
Sure, there are a handful of times, wrong players getting red cards, missed ear bitings etc that VAR maybe could fix. But a vast majority var just makes worse.
Var has got to go. I don’t watch football because they precisely apply unambiguous rules. That’s chess or darts or snooker.
Well, they are quite often not getting the clear ones, aren’t they? That’s the big problem, there are many situations that could go either way and only fans of the team on the receiving end would be frustrated (probably the recent Newcastle goal and the potential foul against Gabriel belongs there).
However, when someone forgets to draw the offside line, draws it incorrectly, or doesn’t understand what the on-field decision was, something’s very wrong. Add to that blatant penalties not given (Onana vs Wolves springs to mind) and VAR completely loses credibility.
I love VAR. it catches out refs who may have a “leaning” towards certain bigger clubs and their managers.
I agree the genie is out the bottle… but we will never make VAR work. Its impossible.
No matter what happens people will want to change it. The current focus seems to be on limiting the time taken to make a decision i.e. if you can’t decide in 1 minute then its not clear and obvious.
But if we made that change then it would be about 2 weeks until a managers out there saying “It was an obvious decision, they should be able to see it in 1 minute, they’re just incompetent”. We’d end up putting more pressure on the refs leading to more incidents like the Liverpool v Spurs goal and we’d end up discussing removing the time cap rule to improve decisions.
We’re forever in a circle now of how we get VAR right, its not just part of football now, it’s the biggest part… and I’m sick of it.
I can imagine the fans comments on hairline decisions if it was abolished. Us fans are two faced as fuck
They removed the crutch of human error. Which is their own fault, and they’ll have to deal with the consequences.
It’s not worth it. Ruining goal celebrations is not worth it
VAR personnel should be outside of the normal referee pool. Enough of “can’t embarrass my friend” BS. And honestly, VAR skillset isn’t the same as on field referee.
I also think there should be two on field referees, but that one is probably a bit more controversial.
Problem with that is most people don’t actually know the rules of the game.
With the 2 refs it would still cause fuck ups. Alot of decisions in football are subjective. Just have to look at Newcastle goal against arsenal. It’s probably a 50-50 split on whether joelinton fouled the defender
I don’t think having two refs on the field should be controversial though. The refs are unprotected as is with one person having a lot of autonomy. I know it’s a different sport with a smaller area of play but take a look at the NFL. There are 7 officials on the field. Whenever they call a flag or foul there isn’t crowding of the refs by players. Additionally they all come together to make the call and announce it on the PA system. Am I asking that for football? No but having more officials so that they can discuss cards in addition to VAR will give refs more tools to do their job right. My heavily depreciated 0.02¢
I don’t think having two refs on the field should be controversial though. The refs are unprotected as is with one person having a lot of autonomy. I know it’s a different sport with a smaller area of play but take a look at the NFL. There are 7 officials on the field. Whenever they call a flag or foul there isn’t crowding of the refs by players. Additionally they all come together to make the call and announce it on the PA system. Am I asking that for football? No but having more officials so that they can discuss cards in addition to VAR will give refs more tools to do their job right. My heavily depreciated 0.02¢
VAR personell should consist of 50% professionals and 50% neutral couch-experts (us normal people who just watch alot of football)
I personally feel as long as humans operate VAR it’s has flaws. It needs to be totally run by AI. It’s strange because I watched the rugby and cricket World Cup and the VAR was so much better.
Exactly. Refs need to get better at their job, VAR procedures need to be refined/improved, and some rules need to be tweaked to make more sense with VAR (this should have all happened before they rolled out VAR).
Even with how poorly its been utilised, VAR has increased the % of correct decisions made so anyone arguing for abolishing VAR needs to argue that a lower % of correct decisions is a good thing.
Is there data somewhere about that % of correct decisions made? The trouble sometimes is that even with VAR, correct decisions are still subjective a lot of the time.
Unpopular opinion: More refs. Get more of them (not in the center of the pitch) but around on the outside so that there can be more of a consensus with various decisions. Then if there is disagreement, it can go to VAR so that 4 different groups (AR 1, AR2, Center, VAR) can all have their view points.
Yea they’ve fucked it. No matter what version of VAR they settle on, the days of properly celebrating goals are over. The single greatest thing about the sport, the thing that keeps us all hanging in there year after year, the hope, all fucked.
I’m Utd. The single greatest moment I’ve had was Sheringhams equaliser in 99. Even more than Oles winner because I went from total despair to total elation in a split second. That can never happen again. To any team. And that is the saddest thing about all of this.
They genuinely have ruined the greatest game on earth.