VAR: Good or bad for football?

Video Assistant Referee (VAR) was first introduced into football during a friendly match between France and Italy in 2016, and was introduced in order to correct referee’s mistakes during a game. For example VAR has the ability to award penalties or take them away, along with send players off or even reduce a red card down to a yellow. The system is similar to rugby’s Television Match Official (TMO) which can stop play and review if a try has been scored or the severity of a challenge allowing the refs to determine what action is appropriate. Since that friendly match between France and Italy, VAR has been introduced into the top 5 leagues across Europe (Premier League, Seria A, La Liga, Ligue 1, Bundesliga) along with being implemented in the Australian and American leagues. VAR across Europe had it’s problems at first however it seems that leagues such as Seria A, The Bundesliga, and La Liga have greatly improved how the technology works and seem to be happy with how it works now. This is due to VAR becoming a lot quicker and referee’s being able to check a monitor on the side of the pitch which allows them to get a closer look at the decision.

The players also stop surrounding the referee as they know the decision is going to a VAR check and they can see this occurring on big screens in the stadium along with fans also getting to see the check live within the ground. If the players do surround the referee then they are only making the VAR check slower which isn’t exciting to see. VAR has also been introduced to the Champions League and Europa League, giving an introduction of the technology to Scottish clubs Celtic and Rangers. An example of this working successfully was seen in the Europa League round of 32 first leg clash between FC Copenhagen and Celtic FC in which Ryan Christie of Celtic FC appeared to commit a handball after his arm was in an unnatural position. The referee originally missed this however after he checked the VAR pitch side monitor, the referee awarded Copenhagen a penalty.

However in the Premier League and Ligue 1, VAR has caused mass controversy leaving fans angry and frustrated with the technology. Fans believe that the technology has drained the passion out of football due to how long it takes to review if a goal should stand or not leaving many fans to think if they should even bother celebrating. Sometimes the decisions given by VAR are very inconsistent within the same game leading to fans scratching their heads over why potentially one decision has been given in the game by the technology but a very similar decision is not given later on in the game or vice versa. There has also been incidents in which the lines for off-sides haven’t been used properly within the technology leading to wrong decisions being made. The biggest concern in the Premier League is the absence of the pitch side monitor making decisions take a lot longer than they should as the VAR is reviewed potentially hundreds of miles away from stadiums at Stockley Park. An amusing incident of VAR being unable to be used was seen in a match between Nice vs Toulouse in Ligue 1 in which rats chewed through the cables prior to kick off rendering the technology useless.

Overall, VAR is an efficient way of being able to review decisions if used properly and quickly which knocks silly mistakes from referee’s and their assistants out of the game. However VAR still has it’s issues leading to fans being disappointed if they can’t celebrate goals quickly and becoming frustrated at simple errors leading to a call for change, potentially even getting rid of VAR all together.