VAR Isn’t The Problem. It’s Exposing It.

You can’t escape it. VAR is the daily debate. Is football better off with it? Or do we want to go back to good, honest, “pure” football. But is anything really that much different to before?

We seem to be pretending that we never complained about referees before VAR. Never complained about the linesman keeping his flag down with the striker was a yard off. The goal ruled out for a handball that never happened. The penalty given even though we all saw the player dive. Of course we know that’s not true. The debate around controversy in the game was constant, and to be honest we all securely like it.

It was frustrating and arguments would rage on social media for days, with everyone from pundits to ex-pros having their own opinion. Nowadays though, the first move is to blame VAR. Surely with VAR the referees have an EVEN BETTER chance of getting the decision right, don’t they? In the past we gave refs a bit of rope, as we recognised that everything they saw was in real time, and that they didn’t have the benefit of a video replay, or any help at all really. But the truth is that title runs were destroyed by this fact, Cup Finals won and lost, relegation battles decided by it, but we forgave it. It was all part of the beautiful game.

VAR is only technology.

I think this gets lost in the argument a lot. Remember, VAR is just tech. It’s tech that’s there to support the officials, but the ultimate decision still comes down to a human being.

So why, even with the benefit of that video support, are they still getting so many decisions wrong?

Well the truth is, they’re not so much. We don’t celebrate the big calls that VAR has helped get right. The game-defining decisions, that without VAR the referee’s would have missed and clubs would have been wrongly cheated out of the right result.

This is a classic case of the grass is always greener. When there was no VAR we said “if the ref’s could see what we see they would make better decisions’. Now that they have that, we say VAR is ruining the game and its the videos fault! That can't be the case. I think if we were honest, we would admit VAR has helped more than it’s hindered. The way VAR is used, or the way the rules ar interpreted are another debate entirely, but to say it hasn’t improved the ability to get decisions right in the game would be a lie.

Do we want to go back to a time where we could see on the sofa that the ref had got it wrong, the pundits in the studio could see the ref got it wrong, but the person with the the least support is the one who’s decision is ultimately the most important one? I say no.

To say that VAR is ruining the game is ridiculous. What it’s doing is showing us that the way referee’s interpret the rules of football is so diverse and inconsistent, that it’s this and the rules themselves that now need to catch up.