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.
One of the main arguments for keeping it is looking at the decisions given in the women’s game between Chelsea and Real Madrid. 2 horrendous decisions given that wouldn’t have happened if var was there.
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.
VAR does work, the reffs are the problem
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.
Any decision for handball anywhere on the field should result in a indirect free kick. Automated offsides. More camera angles and better cameras. Scrap “clear and obvious” and just get the right call. Which would mean you’d need to give more control to the var. Warp the rules to make var better.
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.
I think people need to accept that VAR is never going to give perfect decisions, and work on making it as accurate as possible while avoiding disruption of games.
We should introduce automated offside decisions, which would immediately save time.
Totally with you. VAR is a tool that isn’t used consistently well. Change the process, protocols, and improve the use of the tool, don’t cancel the tool. Like imagine cavemen wanting to revert to hammering pegs with stones after being given hammers, only because they couldn’t learn how to use a hammer right and kept hammering their fingers lol.
IMO, the current issue with VAR is that in its current application it is stifled and shackled. It’s an “assistant” referee and therefore actual authority sits with onfield officials. As such, intervention is mostly based on the subjective grounds of “was there a clear and obvious error made by onfield officials” according to the opinion of this humble VAR official (offside aside). Instead intervention should take place when an offense is spotted regardless of the onfield decision, and this “clear and obvious error by onfield” humdrum should be dropped altogether. Give VAR more decision making authority to override onfield officials and drop the silly clear and obvious criterion and we’ll be moving ahead. In other words: Video Referee, not Video Assistant Referee. Probably I’d argue ultimate authority should sit with the Video Ref.
Also, we don’t want to over-police the game. The fact that this is a physical game should be factored and rooted in the heart of video refereeing. Everything slomo looks like a UFC tackle. Every hand placed on a shoulder, and every shirt tug looks like a judo grapple when the frames are frozen. The “Video refereeing checklist” of what is a foul in each distinct measurable situation needs to be articulated and defined. Today it seems like it’s subjective and up to the operator’s interpretation leading to the inconsistencies we see.
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.
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.