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?