Remember when the football was the main talking point after every game? Remember when pundits dedicated their post-match analysis to a goal or a poor piece of defending? Oh, how we long for those moments again. Today, refereeing decisions dominate headlines for weeks at a time, begging the question: Has this sport made an irreversible mistake by introducing VAR?
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Once upon a time, the referee was merely a facilitator between two teams competing against one another. Some of them, of course, naturally liked to steal the show, but today the show is theirs whether they like it or not. Reactions to games, in fact, are incomplete if a significant amount of time isn't dedicated to analysing what the match official got wrong or right, so much so that studio shows employ former referees to sit on the panel as if it's entertainment! Referees are obviously massively important, but the attention they're getting as a result of VAR's implementation isn't good for them nor the sport.
The introduction of VAR was voted on unanimously by Premier League clubs in November 2018, pending testing, before formally being put into action for the 2019/20 campaign after initially having been used at the 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup and the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Following these tournaments, the main concern was that VAR created just as much confusion as it created clarity and perhaps it would be fair to suggest the same is still true in 2023, and especially in England's top division, supposedly the best league in the world. For offsides and cases of mistaken identity, or violent conduct that occurs away from the ball, VAR has worked. However, for subjective calls such as penalty decisions and tackles, the technology has been misused and, at the same time, abused.
VAR seems to have led to a generally poorer standard of officiating, as referees can now rely on being bailed out by the slow motion replays they're shown if they're called over to check the monitor. The people sitting in the VAR room were supposed to only request the official to look at the monitor on the touchline for errors potentially deemed "clear and obvious", and yet these requests are made sometimes more than once in a game. The intention of this is to highlight what the referee didn't spot, and those intentions are good, but those pauses and delays only cause frustration among players, coaches, supporters in the ground and those on social media. Those angry voices are then amplified when pundits on TV share similar opinions.
Football's quest for perfection has failed miserably and will continue to fail. The more time referees spend at the monitor during games, the more exposed they are to abuse and the more their decisions are debated. What is football doing to protect them, by the way? In my view, VAR's introduction has increased the amount of hate they receive because of the very reason it was brought into the game – to serve as back-up for officials should they make mistakes. Fans, instead of in the past when all they had was one single highlight upon which to judge if they were wrong or right about their initial appeal, now get to observe as the referee makes an error in judgement over the course of two or three minutes. Two or three minutes of your life you can never get back, and still a bad subjective call! That isn't good for football. Growing up, as I understood it, you accepted things won't always go the way of your team. They'll be hard done by, they'll have a player unfairly sent off, but the same was true for the other 19 teams you don't support. We were all in the same boat, as we are today with VAR, but conversations back then revolved more around the football, more around the players, or their skill, or a brilliant goal from outside the box, than it did about refereeing decisions.
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But, with football and the world heading in the direction it is, the concern is that FIFA only doubles down on the use of technology due to the current criticism it is getting and takes us to a place where none of it is even watchable anymore. From the start, I never liked the idea of VAR delays. Now I despise what it's doing to this sport I love.
Written by @KurtLaduma
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