VAR IS KILLING OUR GAME!

Wilder leads the protests after yet another ‘goal’ is ruled out

CHRIS WILDER last night voiced his fury over yet another video nasty as The Mail on Sunday reveals its four-point plan to save the VAR experiment from disaster.

The Sheffield United manager was raging at having a goal ruled out after a knife-edge offside call in the Blades’ 1- 1 draw at Tottenham, saying: ‘ They’ll have to look at VAR in the summer. It has changed the game.’

Other critics also once again lashed out at the latest questionable decision with Match of the Day presenter Gary Lineker tweeting: ‘VAR at its absurd worst. WTF are they doing to our game?’

Hostility towards VAR has never been greater after three months littered with controversy which has prompted The Mail on Sunday to produce an extensive manifesto for change.

APART from the rugby, the steak, the sushi, the trains, the hospitality, the hot springs, the honesty, the cleanliness and the courtesy, there was one other beautiful advantage in spending the last five weeks in Japan: the sheer relief of not having to confront the unfolding day-byday disaster of VAR, being only vaguely aware of it lurching from one farce to another, trailing hysteria and ridicule in its wake.

The problem is, I wanted VAR. I was in favour of it. I still am. But not like this. Not in this ruin of what it was supposed to be. Not in this abomination that has, so far, proved all the people I called troglodytes for opposing it absolutely correct in their scepticism and their animus. English football, the richest enclave of the richest sport on this planet, has managed to make itself a laughing stock.

VAR, as it stands, is not fit for purpose. It is close to being unworkable. The game’s confidence in it has already ebbed away. The rules appear to change from week to week. Interpretation is inconsistent. Managers are puzzled and angry. The officials are panicking. Every week, there’s a new wrinkle. Everything that the Premier League and the Professional Game Match Officials could have got wrong, they have got wrong.

So it goes like this. The referee is in charge. No, he isn’t. The referee should look at a touchline monitor. No, he shouldn’t. VAR can judge an offside to within a few millimetres. No, it can’t. VAR is here to correct clear and obvious errors. Not if you’re Son Heung-min it isn’t. It’s here to encourage more goals and give the advantage to the attacker. Not if you’re Roberto Firmino’s armpit it isn’t.

And then there’s the communication part. Communication is key to a successful relationship. Everyone knows that. Which is why the relationship between VAR and the fans has broken down. There is no communication. In other sports, the spectators know what is going on. In tennis, in rugby, in cricket, they can see the replays on the big screen. The fans are i ncluded in t he process. But football?

In football, even that part is beyond them. It’s pathetic. The authorities’ lack of planning, the lack of insight, the lack of understanding, is pitiful. It’s not so much that there’s a delay when VAR checks something. It’s that nobody knows why there’s a delay. Nobody knows what the hell is going on.

A friend of mine went to the Manchester City- Spurs game in August when Gabriel Jesus had a late goal disallowed by VAR. He wrote to me about it. ‘We left the game not knowing why the goal had been disallowed,’ he said.

‘We walked to Piccadilly station talking to fans around us... nobody knew why the goal was disallowed. We chatted on the platform and on the train back to Alderley. Nobody knew.

‘It was 9.30. Bought some wine in Waitrose and bumped into Paul Dickov. He did us the courtesy for 10 minutes trying to explain to us what had gone on. It’s so wrong. Fans who have had the courtesy to turn up to a live game should be the priority. Not the armchair fans.’

The situation is not helped by the fact that some people have always wanted VAR to fail. Professional contrarians. Against Remain and against Leave, too. Hate VAR but threw up their hands in horror in the old days when human error created injustice after injustice.

The NFL, which has been using video replay for the last 20 years or more, is a good example of the Can’t Win scenario at the moment. Last season, in the NFC Championship game, one of the biggest games of the season, the officials missed a blatant incident of pass interference — a foul in football terms — that meant the Los Angeles Rams went to the Super Bowl instead of the New Orleans Saints.

It was cut and dried. No possible argument. But pass interference was not one of the areas of the game covered by video replay. So the decision stood, even though everyone knew from TV replays that it was perpetuating an in justice. A lawsuit was even launched, in vain, to try to get the result annulled.

There were also, of course, demands that video replay be extended to cover pass interference. After months of being lobbied, the NFL duly extended video replay. Now, a few months into the new season, there have been some contentious calls and many are saying it shouldn’t be used for pass interference after all.

So scrapping VAR isn’t the answer. The status quo ante is rarely the answer. We introducedVAR because the previous system was obviously outdated and it was clear referees needed help. VAR is progress. Or it should be. You can’t ignore technology and pretend it doesn’t exist. Then t he chaos returns in its old form. The answer is compromise. The answer is the best of both worlds. It is what we should have done in the first place.

What football tried to do was go from nought to 60 in the blink of an eye. Having resisted technological assistance for so long, it finally embraced goal-line technology in 2013. And then, when that was a success, it got giddy. From shunning video replay, football decided to use it for everything: offsides, handballs, penalty decisions, bad tackles, everything.

THE compromise, the answer, is to take the best of what the NFL, cricket and tennis do and allow each coach two challenges per match. It is the perfect solution, which is one of the reasons it will be discussed at a Premier League meeting this week.

The idea has been dismissed by the game’ s lawmakers, the International Football Association Board (IFAB) because they do not have the vision to see that it would work. It works because you put the onus back on t he competitor because if the officials make a mistake, the wronged party has the chance to contest it.

And if coaches neglect the chance to contest a decision and it turns out they should have contested it, then that’s on them. No one can complain. It works because it gives football most of its spontaneity back, the loss of which so many have mourned. It works because it does not undermine the referee at every turn.

Give the referee the power to judge the merits of the coach’s challenge, too. Sure, have a VAR at Stockley Park to advise but let the referee make his own mind up. Let him be the one to go over to a touchline monitor and view the incident again.

VAR, in its current shambolic state, has made it feel as if football is in the grip of anarchy. It needs to get some order back. All there is now is confusion. All there is now is angst and controversy. It is the opposite of what was supposed to happen. It is the opposite of what could still happen.

VAR is still the future. It just has to go one step back to take two steps forward.

‘THE ANSWER IS TO GIVE EACH COACH TWO CHALLENGES PER MATCH’