It seems that every single week, without fail, football fans are consumed by the controversy that is VAR (Video Assistant Referee).
Across the country, each round of match days seems to throw up at least one or two seemingly ridiculous decisions, despite refereeing teams having several individuals (and minutes) to review, discuss and come to a sensible verdict.
The Premier League does seem to be the one body across the global game which seemingly cannot make this system work effectively – anyone who watched the 2022 World Cup in Qatar saw exactly how VAR should be applied – minimum involvement, light touch and speedy decisions.
In Qatar, FIFA seemed to work on the basis that ‘if we cannot make a decision within a short space of time, we will stay with the on-field decision’ and didn’t it work well! We saw only short, infrequent interventions and the entire tournament passed without any major VAR controversy, whilst in the Premier League we have the regular, SKY TV appearance of referee’s supremo, Howard Webb in order to try and explain the latest batch of seemingly ridiculous decisions.
Webb does his best to explain the process and decision made, but far too often is left admitting that his refereeing team ‘got that one wrong’ and in all honesty, this does beg the question – how on earth can a team of 7 ‘professionals’ come to the wrong conclusion quite so often.
There seems to be a complete lack of common sense applied by officials and they leave themselves open completely to the often made claim that they simply do not understand the game, having never played it to a reasonable level.
There seems to be far too much involvement from the VAR team at each fixture – it seems that this team of officials cannot wait to get involved – those who claim we have reached the point of re- refereeing games have a strong case – has VAR made our officials terrified of actually making a decision, instead relying on the VAR team to advise them? Far too often we see an important decision given by the on-field ref, only for that decision to be overturned on review.
So I say – referees, do your job more effectively – be brave enough to actually make decisions and stop waiting for VAR to bail you out, otherwise, the game is in danger of being ruined even further than you have already!
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