Terrific article from the Guardian on the way VAR is changing the game, https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...m_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP=fiver_email
Exactly what me and a few others have been saying for the last 2yrs.Football is not perfect thank god because it would be extremely boring if it was.The big problem is that its here now and the powers that be will do everything to keep it to prove they are right.
Great article. I can't remember thinking about it too much at the time, but I suspect I'm one of those who thought it would be a great idea at the time but have now changed their mind. I like to think there is a role for righting obvious wrongs - the review system in cricket works brilliantly in my opinion. However, what we have at the moment just isn't the right answer, and having thought about it a bit more I'm wondering whether perhaps there just isn't one. Football's the wrong sport for it.
Yes I read that the other day. Personally I've only experienced it once. That was in the Cup at Burnley where the ball was on the penalty spot after a clear foul and yellow card. However, VAR ruled that it had been offside in the buildup so penalty and card erased from history. It was quite surreal. It should only be used for clear and glaring mistakes by the officials on the pitch, definitely not for hairline offsides etc.
I still don't know why it is like it is to be honest. Seems to me, you stick three referees in a room with a green and red button in front of them. They watch the game back on a 5 second delay. The ref blows up, the tape is slowed to half speed and they have another 5 seconds to press red or green for "agree" or "obvious error" if two of the three don't think it's an obvious error at half the speed the ref had - then it's not "obvious" and the pitch ref's decision stands. If two of them press red there is a maximum of 20 seconds review, screen ref's decision is final. If they can't decide in that 20 seconds - pitch ref decision stands. No reason you couldn't have lights in the grounds so at least when two reds show people know a 20 second delay us about to happen. Goal goes in and it's two greens - celebrate and go wild knowing that's that.
If they altered the offside rule to say a player must have all his/her body offside for it to be offside , that is daylight between attacker and last defender , I think a lot of the disreputable offside decisions would be eliminated .
Pretty much exactly what I was going to say. Great article, agree with all of it. Why not try DRS in football? As many reviews of whatever decisions you like, but once you've had two where the ref was right, no more. It'd be worth it just to see the ego and the paddying that sort of system would inevitably draw in the Prem.
England vs. Holland in the Nations League Semi-Final. Looked like a clear goal and 15,000+ England fans thinking we'd scored. Then complete silence for what felt like an eternity with people sat at home in England on WhatsApp messaging through updates on whether it was going to be disallowed or not. I really enjoyed how it was used in Russia 2018. In fact there was pretty much universal praise for it. But what we introduced has been miles away from that.
Absolutely agree. With such precision technology, some of the decisions we're getting where someone's fingernail is offside are absolutely ludicrous.
