Consulting VAR takes away from the ‘feel’ of the sport

VAR, the technology, is said to be taking away the emotions from the beautiful game of football. Before VAR if a goal was scored, the player would just check the offside flag and go straight to celebrating if it wasn’t an offside. Now after VAR, if a goal is scored, players first look straight towards the referee rather than going on to celebrate. It has taken out the adrenaline and excitement out of football. Moreover, after every major event in the game, the players rush to the referee to force a review by VAR, which really slows down the game and breaks the momentum.

However, one can also argue that the fans should deal with all of this, as long as the correct decision is made. I agree that there are advantages of using the technology as well. I believe that VAR has improved decision-making and the game is becoming fairer because of it.

In my opinion, technological developments like VAR are not the problem, it is how they are being implemented. Sometimes the referee gives many reviews to one team but few or none to the other. The final decision is ultimately up to the head referee. Hence, I believe each team should be given a fixed number of reviews and each time the team gets a review correct, the number of reviews left remains the same. This will be fair to both teams and will reduce the time spent in reviewing all major incidents in the game. Also, since the evaluation won’t take place until the opponent team appeals for it, the joy of the game will remain the same. I think that currently we are still learning how to effectively use the technology.

From Mr Hamdan Shahid Supply Chain Analyst based in Dubai