HELP US ARSENE!
Plea to Wenger to help reduce VAR misery for fans
MIKE RILEY hopes to use Arsene Wenger’s new role at FIFA to help push through law changes that will improve VAR — although he admits that the Premier League is still at odds with the rest of the world about how to use it.
The former Arsenal manager has been appointed chief of global development at football’s world governing body where he will be involved heavily with IFAB, the sport’s lawmakers, in making any potential alterations to the rules.
Riley, as head of the Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL), announced this month that the Premier League would start to add extra information to VAR graphics in stadiums — but he insists any further changes are prevented by IFAB’s protocols.
As revealed by Sportsmail, IFAB are under pressure from federations around the world to alter their law that forbids the communication between referees and the VAR to be broadcast in stadiums — a move that would improve the current poor fan experience.
IFAB’s advisory panels, on which Wenger now sits, have been discussing whether to make any tweaks and will return their findings on December 3.
‘They (IFAB) want it to be a protocol to suit the game. It’s just they want one to suit the world game, we want one to suit the Premier League,’ said Riley at a briefing at Stockley Park. ‘I think that (Wenger’s appointment) is a really good opportunity to talk to people and influence that opinion.
‘The things from my side are improve the consistency of decision-making, improve the efficiency of the process, and in the Premier League it is to improve fan experience inside the stadium.’ Days before his FIFA appointment, Wenger told BeIN Sports: ‘It is working but not in all cases. It is better than before. You have more right decisions, especially on offsides.’ However, he has the same concerns about the technology that were revealed by The Mail on Sunday that showed the frame rates of the cameras are not good enough to adjudicate for certain marginal offside calls.
‘The only uncertainty about offside is the timing of when you stop the picture,’ said Wenger. ‘It has to be super accurate to be right. A quick player can move 9cm in 0.08 seconds. That is a big distance. ‘I am delivering the message that, at the moment offside is manual. It has to be completely automatic.’
Technology firm Hawk-Eye are working on a system that tracks the offside line while the Bundesliga are trialling a mechanism that can quickly mark a player’s most advanced or hindmost body part.
Riley said Premier League clubs were happy with VAR and would rather have its consistency even if there are still issues.
He also reiterated PGMOL’s desire for referees to use pitch-side monitors ‘sparingly’ to maintain the ‘pace and intensity’ of the Premier League.
It was put to Riley, though, that some VAR officials have spent nearly four minutes judging offsides. ‘We don’t want stoppages of three minutes if we can avoid it,’ he said. ‘The better we get at this process, the more we will be able to reduce those times.’
It comes after it was revealed VAR had incorrectly overturned four correct decisions by onfield referees so far this season.
And those mistakes do not include other incidents where PGMOL believes that VAR should have intervened but did not.