VAR is needed but it mustn't kill the thrill
How to improve VAR ...
The fear with VAR is that a whole generation of fans grow up in the Premier League unable to throw themselves fully into the moment. Previous generations could revel in the moment when the ball hits the net and the dopamine hits. That rush is why you go to games, along with the camaraderie, routine and loyalty to a club. A generation currently has some of their match-day joy stolen at a time when ticket prices rise and money’s tight. Football has to be careful not to alienate fans in its search for every right decision. Don’t kill the thrill.
Debates in football rarely accommodate attempts at nuance. Issues and incidents are viewed as black or white, good or bad, often through a tribal lens. It is possible to support technology and want it used more judiciously. I’m a supporter of VAR for catching the clear and obvious but the balance of its interventions has to be better. The Premier League, PGMO and the FA must ensure that the adrenalin shot remains.
This weekend’s VAR-free FA Cup fourth round will be a reminder to the authorities. You can guarantee intense debate about how match-day is better off without VAR, just days after the forensics and their friends told us how better it was with it following events at Anfield.
Howard Webb, who sets the tone at PGMO, is undeniably a fan of football. It’s down to Webb to get the balance right. Webb could have done with VAR at the 2010 World Cup final when the Dutch were kicking lumps out of the Spanish. Not every game is like that, though.
On the rare occasions he talks in public, Webb espouses a mantra of “minimum interference, maximum benefit”. So let VAR scramble into action only for the clear and obvious errors. And, when it does, ensure that all comms between officials are relayed live for reasons of clarity, transparency and accountability. IFAB still has to be persuaded to allow this. The game does not belong to IFAB or PGMO. It belongs to players and supporters. Let them enjoy it.
It’s been interesting to note how the debate has unfolded over the ruling out of Manchester City’s third goal at Anfield. For many of those watching, whether inside Anfield and on television, the immediate reaction was to be engulfed in emotion: Alisson caught upfield, Rayan Cherki shooting from the halfway line, the race between former RB Salzburg team-mates Dominik Szobsoszlai and Erling Haaland, the fouls, and the ball going in. Goal! It’s what sport’s all about, two elite competitors duelling, a breathless chase, adrenalin for these athletes and watching fans alike, and what the entire sport for 163 years is predicated on. Goal! The referee Craig Pawson signals it. Then the forensics arrive on the scene.
The once vibrant body of a great moment of sporting drama, one that captured the blissful chaos of football, is laid out on the law-enforcers’ slab and coldly dissected. Drawing on tech, the forensics dutifully, dispassionately apply laws drawn up in committee room rather than in the heat of sporting battle.
They work backwards to their conclusion, giving a red card to Szoboszlai for his foul, not giving a yellow card to Haaland for his foul (which would have been his second), because first offence takes precedence, and then ruling out Cherki’s goal. No goal. Good process, lads. The inevitable reaction was frustration and anger that such an epic moment was debited from the memory bank, a precious feeling stolen. Bureaucracy beats beauty.
Then comes the subsequent reaction of those explaining why due process worked, why the laws of the game always trump the spirit of the game and why their views are more important than the feelings of fans and players, the actual lifeblood of the game. “You can’t referee off feelings,” they argue. How soulless to think that football doesn’t stir feelings.