VAR: the flop of the season

Usually, at the end of the season, the task is to review a team’s performance or a players debut campaign and begin looking at next season in hope of improvement. But, it’s 2020, and things are a little different in modern football.

So, instead of the usual task of summing up the likes of Christian Pulisic’s or Nicolas Pépé’s debut campaigns, I thought it might be necessary to take a look at VAR and its first venture into English football. Spoiler alert: it didn’t go well.

“Liverpool will just about make top four with VAR in play” one fan would bellow to the other in admiration of the technology seemingly made to eliminate controversial decisions. We now know, of course, that VAR was the least likely thing to prevent the train of success at Liverpool if anything stood a chance of stopping it at all.

The Video Assistant Referee sounded an easy enough idea to implement; when a referee made a mistake, and they were guaranteed to do so, VAR and the five extra sets of eyes all watching in slow motion at the perfect angle of the incident, would step in to make the correct call.

It was meant to be as easy as ever to avoid the constant pain of refereeing mistakes. And after it worked well enough at the World Cup, many were rightfully satisfied with its arrival to the Premier League a year later- because, after all, how else would justice of fourth place be served to the apparent cheaters in Liverpool?

VAR fulfilled its purpose in Russia almost without mistake; offsides were easily determined, and decisions didn’t take all too long. Yet, two years later, I sit here in lockdown stressing at the sheer thought of Martin Tyler echoing the words: “The goal is being checked by VAR” before the rulers are produced, lines are drawn, and inevitable offsides given as a result of a slightly bigger toe.

What was moulded into a useful addition to the game has become a nightmare one in the hands of Premier League officials. Giving the power of disallowing a seemingly perfect goal to the likes of Martin Atkinson is like handing the keys of the White House to a big orange celebrity- imagine if that happened!

The Premier League officials took said power and supposedly brilliant idea and ran it into the ground to the point that it is ruining the enjoyment of the game.

Before the days of VAR, I celebrated a goal after one quick glimpse of the linesman’s unraised flag. Now, what is meant to be a moment of joy is filled with the anxiety of a VAR decision.

Instead of a quick glimpse of the linesman’s flag, it is a long five-minute wait of slow-motion replays, uncertainty and drawing of lines before the ultimate disallowing of the goal or collective sigh of relief. Either way, by the time the decision is made, the moment is gone.

And, yes, VAR does have its positives, too. A goal can be disallowed in your favour to help your side maintain a lead, just as quick as one at the right end can be chalked off.

The feeling of relief when you witness a rival team begin to celebrate before Martin Atkinson draws the famous box to ruin the party is both comedic and joyful- like most things when they aren’t happening to you. Yet, ask both sets of fans whether they’d like VAR to be given the boot and the answer will undoubtedly be a resounding yes.

The fact is, everyone is fed up with it. Whether you sit champions of England, the world and Europe or stagnating in mid-table, VAR would have done unnecessary damage at some point in the campaign.

It could have been an armpit offside, a dubious fail, or a handball given as a result of the ball hitting a player’s chest or shoulder, all scenarios have happened throughout the season and should have been easily avoided.

Those in charge will have a decision to make regarding the technology next season. The idea itself still proves practical, but the design and rules that follow, seem absurd. Perhaps a deeper dive into the level of officiating in England is needed rather than the scrapping of technology that in other hands, has worked without noticeable error.

Increased penalties

The general thought going into the season with VAR in play was that penalties would be hard to come by. It was meant to come in and eradicate any chance of a diving player.

Instead, however, the introduction of the technology has led to a record-breaking amount of penalties for Manchester United. It does have to be said, though, that when it comes to penalty decisions, unless it is clear and obvious, they are left to the referees to deal with.

Of course, the main issue with this is that nobody really knows what ‘clear and obvious’ means, leading to mass confusion on and off the pitch. It also means that when a penalty incident is not given by the referee, VAR cannot get involved no matter how wrong the decision is.

It’s all a very confusing way to do things when considering how the technology flourished in the World Cup.

Most controversial decisions

VAR has been the culprit of some pretty awful decisions during its Premier League tenure. Manchester United’s opening goal against Liverpool was a particularly bad day the office for the technology. Despite a foul in the build-up on Divock Origi, Marcus Rashford’s opening strike did not get chalked off after a VAR check.

The poor decisions didn’t stop there, however. Being offside by an armpit became a thing when Roberto Firmino’s goal against Aston Villa was ruled out before many others went onto suffer the same dreadful fate. And, if armpits weren’t bad enough, Pedro Neto’s goal for Wolves against Liverpool was ruled out because of an offside toe in the build-up.

It was at the Emirates, however, when VAR really exposed its goal killing instincts. Sokratis thought he had the winner when he headed home against Crystal Palace, and rightfully so. The Greek defender did everything as expected; the goal from the set play seemed as fair as ever.

Yet, those in the VAR room could not help themselves and eventually ruled that Sokratis had fouled his man upon scoring. The decision remains a bizarre one and one that sums up VAR.

Technology drama in the first game post lockdown

Technology in sports has to earn the trust of the fans, pundits and the players taking to the pitch. And that’s exactly what goal-line technology has done since its introduction in 2012. It came in, and has done its job without any issues until the first game post lockdown in the Premier League.

The situation occurred when the Aston Villa keeper, Nyland, dropped the ball over the line following a Sheffield United freekick. Usually, when this happens, the referee’s watch would buzz and let them know that the ball has crossed the line. This time, however, that did not happen.

Not to worry, though, because VAR was there to fix the problem, right? Well, think again. Those in the VAR room sat there silently while replays hit our screens of the ball crossing the line.

Yet, still, the technology and those using it didn’t get involved. Instead, the score remained level, leaving Aston Villa with a precious point to take away; a point that would end up taking them to survival.

The simple thing would have been to watch the replays and award the goal instead of reacting with silence. It was a classic VAR and Premier League mistake, almost a laughable one too.

 

As we watch a mistake of this calibre week in week out, that laugh soon turns to a furious frown at the clearly incapable officials and VAR program. Perhaps it is time to retrain the officials on how the program is meant to work or change the program itself.

After all, the game has changed enough since they would have taken the test. So, why not put them through their paces in an updated test? The test will evaluate their knowledge on VAR, and decide whether or not they know what to do in certain situations. It will at least give the Premier League some indication of the effectiveness of those officiating the game.

Or, perhaps we scrap the technology altogether. It clearly hasn’t worked, so why not scrap it? Getting rid of it would save the time consumed waiting for a decision, spare the confusion for those offsides by a toe, and, ultimately, make the games more enjoyable.

Overall, VAR gets a disappointing score of 3/10 from me after a disastrous debut campaign. And that’s being generous! It has been absolutely useless at times. It has its positives sometimes, yes, but those do not get any near the constant negatives. All the fans want is the goals to once more flow without interruption. Is that too much to ask for? Or, do we need a VAR check on that?