Forum | VAR. No thanks. by Noelmc

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VAR. No thanks. 12:22 - Mar 31 with 4821 views

A great point made by one of the posters on another message board:

"Imagine, just imagine, if in the midst of the mad celebration of Dunne's wonder goal the big screen had flashed up “VAR Check” and how that would have punctured the mood. Even if confirmed 2 minutes later, that ultimate high wouldn’t have been the same. No to VAR"

VAR. No thanks. on 08:06 - Apr 1 with 840 views

nix

VAR. No thanks. on 16:46 - Mar 31 by ed_83

VAR would be fine if the implementation wasn’t so shockingly bad. Nobody complains about goal-line tech because it’s quick, clear and objective. You might eventually get instant & 100% accurate offside decisions but there’ll always be grey areas for the rest. Cricket-style appeals (communicated properly in the stadium) would help deal with the massive clangers without ruining the flow of the game, but there’s no way football administrators will admit they’ve messed the whole thing up.

The thing about cricket is I almost never feel the umpires are biased. In particular I feel confident their appeals end up with the right decision or at least a fair one. In football it seems that even with VAR it favours the bigger clubs, as do the on-field decisions, so as it doesn't iron out unfairness I'd rather not bother with it.

Watching the Man City/Arsenal game yesterday, Anthony Taylor gave every 50/50 to City to the point it was just a joke. I'd much rather they sorted that out.

VAR. No thanks. on 09:25 - Apr 1 with 772 views

GaryBannister86

VAR. No thanks. on 16:46 - Mar 31 by ed_83

Cricket's DRS is brilliant and has actually added to the game as well as cleaning up poor decisions and also helped with players' behaviour.

However, there are no replays, no communication from the dressing room allowed before an appeal is made.

With football, there is all the tech garbage in the dugout now, if there was an appeal system there would be analysts and video rooms beside the pitch......not sure if it would work?

VAR. No thanks. on 09:57 - Apr 1 with 727 views

QPunkR

VAR can fŭck right off. I've been against it from the start as I could foresee exactly where it would end up. Sport is about emotion rather than science and VAR screws with that completely.

Problem is, the genie is out of the box now and there's no way of putting it away. Some Scandi leagues are the only top divisions in Europe still refusing to implement it.

Thing is, I can tell you from the inside that there's no way football leadership will ever even consider binning VAR - there's far too much money invested in it now with friends getting favourable contracts to run it, plus they get so much pressure from the betting sphere over perceived incorrect decisions

Shit but local

VAR. No thanks. on 12:33 - Apr 1 with 647 views

ed_83

VAR. No thanks. on 09:25 - Apr 1 by GaryBannister86

Change it to having the captain request it from the ref, then, and make it a rule that you can’t show replays in the stadium until after the VAR review window has expired. I’m sure teams will try to game the system but there’s ways around it.

VAR. No thanks. on 12:48 - Apr 1 with 617 views

ed_83

VAR. No thanks. on 08:06 - Apr 1 by nix

DRS is great because it gives accurate answers to objective yes / no questions. Did the ball clip the bat? Did it hit the pads in line with the stumps? Did the bowler over-step?

Part of the problem with VAR is that it’s used to decide much more open-ended and subjective questions - whether someone’s arm is in a “natural” or “unnatural” position, whether a challenge is “reckless” or merely “careless”, or even whether a ref’s error is “clear and obvious”.

Those incidents are always going to be inconsistent, with differing views on how to interpret the rules, so applying VAR to them solves nothing and often makes things worse. I mean, you only need to look at that Antony Gordon / Kalvin Phillips penalty shout from the weekend, or the red card in the PSG game, for incidents where VAR is just fundamentally incapable of revealing a “correct” decision.

The other thing that DRS gets right is proportionality: it’s only used when requested, and it leaves marginal decisions unchanged, even if they’re technically incorrect by a millimetre or two (e.g. “umpire’s call” on LBW decisions). It doesn’t try to be perfect or cover ever single incident.

VAR is never going to be perfect either. I genuinely think if you limited it during games, both in terms of how often it’s used and what it covers (i.e. no more stupid handball reviews, and have it only triggered by a team’s limited number of appeals), as well as agreeing that marginal decisions stay with whatever the original on-field decision was, instead of chalking off goals because one armpit hair was offside, then it would slightly more bearable, at least.

[Post edited 1 Apr 14:28]

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