“It was October 18, 2020. The Premier League clash between Everton and Liverpool was live. Reigning champions, Liverpool, had just dealt a spanking from Aston Villa the previous week and looked to make a comeback by beating their bitter rivals. Meanwhile, Everton were filled with confidence thanks to the triumphant start they’ve made in this season — sitting at the top of the league even before the game began. This game had all the ingredients to be a classic. But what followed was another example for fans to justify their hatred of VAR and how it has ruined the beautiful game as we know it.”
As we continue to progress in this modern age of technology and innovation, it didn’t take long for it to be intervened into sports. Nowadays, teams have become stronger, faster, and tougher, helping the players always bring their A-game to every game. But with these improvements comes the need for cutting-edge methods to referee these super-athletes.
It was quite surprising when football (or soccer for ya’ Yankees on the other side of the Atlantic) was so late to the party. It took as late as 2012 for Goal-line technology to be permitted by FIFA and a further 6 more years for VAR (Video Assistant Referee). But while Goal-line technology has been largely praised, VAR, on the other hand, has suffered its fair share of beratement. Well, pull up those socks and put on your cleats as we take a closer look at how it all came sliding downwards.
It was on December 7, 1963, that viewers were treated to the first instance of instant replay in sports. So novel was this idea that the play-by-play announcer, Lindsey Nelson, had to clarify what had just unfolded. Replay technology was expensive and limited to television in its earlier years. It was not until 1986 that the National Football League (NFL) became the first league to use Replay for reviewing and potentially overturning officials’ calls in-game. Even then, the replay was discontinued in 1992 due to pace of play concerns before being reinstated in 1999.
Now that we have got that out of our way let’s look at how VAR works in football. As the name suggests,
VAR is an assistant referee in football, who reviews decisions made by the head referee with the use of video footage and headset for communication specifically in order to minimize human errors, causing substantial influence on match results.
Hoping you just went through that Wikipedia definition, I think you can see where the main problem is.
Football has always been a very straightforward game. Heck, it’s the reason why the sport is so popular! 22 people running behind an inflated animal skin to shoot at a fishing net resting on a pair of post — please name a simpler sport (My dear reader, if you thought of stuff like cards or chess, I was referring to outdoor games, in particular, you big dummy). And as such, the laws governing the widespread phenomenon for professionals are murky, to say the least. Particularly the laws regarding offsides and handballs are pretty vague and lack any proper subtext, which leads to referees taking (a lot of) harsh and straight-up unfair decisions, costing teams dearly. Talk about irony.
Speaking of unfair decisions, remember the game I talked about in the beginning? Well, that game ended 2–2, and it was filled with controversial calls. Everton’s goalkeeper, Jordan Pickford, escaped a red card for a horrific tackle on Liverpool’s center-half, Virgil Van Dijk, which would rule him out for what appeared to be the entire season, all because he was offside in the build-up play. And just when you thought that was crazy, Liverpool captain, Jordan Henderson, scored what would have been a game-winner in the dying minutes of the game, just for VAR to rule it for offside (again!) because Liverpool forward, Sadio Mane’s arm was slight across the offside line before he made the pass to the Red’s captain.
If we look at the finer details of this entire saga, we can see that VAR has had troubles since its infancy. Bringing it too soon for the 2018 FIFA World Cup was the first major fault. Adding the fact that referees had little to no prior experience with this technology only helped add fuel to this dumpster-fire. And as such, the World cup was riddled with a lot of errors, especially in the final showpiece event itself. France had won a penalty that put them 2–1 up, thanks to a very questionable handball (or let us say ball to hand) on Croatia’s Ivan Perisic. That decision turned out to be a devastating blow for the Croats as France ended up winning the trophy in style, beating them by a scoreline of 4–2. But mind you, we’re talking about the World Cup here — the pinnacle of professional football, as far as sports competitions go. It has gathered an even larger viewership than the Olympics. And to say that it’s riddled in errors from those officiating such an event is just poor management and negligence from FIFA.
While technology has had its share of good and bad moments (mostly bad), you can’t really blame it either. Because of VAR’s negative stigma among the fans, supporters react negatively even when the right call is made. For instance, in the Premier League match-up between Wolves and Leicester City back in August 2018, early in the second half, Wolves’ midfielder Leander Dendoncker thinks he has opened the scoring when he finishes from close range with a header following a subsequent corner. But replays reveal that the ball had struck Wolves’ defender Willy Boly’s arm in the build-up, which according to the rules, is disallowed. At the end of the game,
Wolves’ manager Nuno Espirito Santo said that VAR and the new rules could “ruin the game”.
I can go on like this for ages, citing various instances of VAR’s alleged failures. But at the end of the day, what we have to remember is that VAR is here to stay, no matter what we think of it. Just like how we don’t berate newly born babies for not being able to walk, we need to give VAR some time. It was always going to be a learning process. I don’t think anybody expected the issues would be as pronounced as they have been, and work is definitely needed to be done to use VAR optimally. But in time, it’s bound to come out as another piece of technology that has changed the way we see football, for better … or worse.
