WHEN WE NEEDED IT MOST, VAR FAILED...

TeCHnoLogY in football became an inevitability after the 2010 World Cup, and was seen as the answer to a specific occurrence: a travesty of justice. To reach south africa, France required an obvious and deliberate handball by Thierry Henry to beat the republic of Ireland. Then, in the last 16, what should have been an equaliser for england against germany was missed by the Uruguayan officials. Lampard’s shot crossed the line by some distance and everyone knew it. Football appeared antiquated, a hostage to human error. For the biggest tournament to be blighted this way made the game a laughing stock. Fast forward 10 years and what began as a simple idea — make the game fairer, correct clear errors, restore credibility — has us drawing tracers from armpits to turf and identifying mistakes that could not be called with the naked eye. and then a travesty unfolds that is every bit as recognisable as Lampard’s goal in 2010 — and nothing gets done. What frustrates most about sheffield United’s ghost winner is that the mistake was so avoidable. It just needed Var to do the job as envisaged by every fan — by shouting in Michael oliver’s ear that a terrible error had occurred and the sport would look foolish unless it was corrected. It is a surprise Hawk-eye goal line technology is fallible, even once in over 9,000 matches, but there was still a human safety net at stockley Park. Competently informed, oliver could have stopped the game, looked at a pitch-side monitor and maintained football’s integrity. Had he done this, the hated Var system would also have been awarded much-needed merit points. Instead, we are exactly where we were in 2010. If only we had the technology to stop this happening, we moaned; but we do now and it’s still no better.