Craig Fowler on Monday
Why VAR will never get better for your average Scottish football fan
IT feels like there isn’t a single Scottish football weekend which goes past where VAR isn’t one of the biggest topics of conversation after some controversial use, misuse or abstention by the officials. It’s a depressing state of affairs. Scottish football as a spectacle has been diminished due to the introduction of this technology: fans in stadiums are consistently in the dark; waiting times for decisions are too slow and stop the flow of the game; it makes referees the constant centre of attention when they should blend into the background; it takes the wording of laws too literally and moves decision- making away from the spirit of the game; and, most importantly, it reduces the euphoric impact of your team scoring a goal, because there’s now a doubt in the back of your mind that it’s going to be disallowed for some infringement that you may or may not have spotted in the build- up.
Many fans, like myself, were against it from the start and it feels like more are coming across to our way of thinking: it’s just not worth it and it needs to be binned. Supporters have the power to rid it from our game, but we need to unite to make that happen.
In order to do so there is a type of fan who needs to be convinced that VAR is not fit for purpose. Because there are those who are vehemently against it, those who support its use no matter what, and those who hate the current incarnation but still think it is workable. They will either say “it’s not VAR that’s the problem, it’s the people operating it” or “it has to get better”. I’m going to explain why the first point is nonsensical, while the second isn’t possible.
First, “it’s not VAR that’s the issue, it’s the officials”. Well, obviously. This isn’t AI we’re talking about here. VAR stands for Video Assistant Referee. The officials are VAR; VAR is the officials. It’s always going to be a human making the call and therefore it’s always going to be susceptible to human error and, crucially, subjectivity, much in the same way that decisions on the field are made. So if that’s how you perceive VAR then essentially what you’re saying is that officials need to be better, so instead of £ 200,000 being spent by every Scottish Premiership club to implement VAR, why don’t we take that money and use it to train the referees and make them full time, thereby improving the standard.
Which leads me to the second part: that VAR can work if the concept as a whole within Scottish football is improved. This viewpoint is admirable, but flawed.
Of course, it’s not impossible to improve VAR in a literal sense. We could introduce time limits on each individual decision. After all, if a referee, or the officials in the booth, are looking at a foul for longer than 20 seconds, then how can it be judged as a “clear and obvious” error. That way the game isn’t stopped for too long, fans aren’t left wondering what on earth the referee is trying to decipher and it brings the experience back to the essence of what VAR was supposed to be about.
There could be better or quicker communication for supporters inside the ground. And communication between officials and how they use the technology will naturally improve as they get used to using it each week.
These things can be made better and VAR will, as a result, improve. But it still won’t change what the average fan thinks about it and how they experience it.
Because the biggest problem a lot of fans have with VAR isn’t the delays or the detachment in goal celebrations. It’s that so many decisions are wrong. But in fact, they’re not wrong. Very few fouls referred to VAR are black and white, because very few fouls in football are black and white, and those that are can easily be caught by the official on the park.
This year, a list of incorrect VAR decisions in the Scottish top flight was released to the media. These were judged on by an independent panel. I had a look through them and some didn’t seem wrong to me. They seemed perfectly valid under my interpretation of the laws of the game with regards to fouls and misconduct.
Talk to any current and former referee and they will tell you: show a roomful of officials an incident and ask whether it is the right decision or not. Chances are, half of them will say it is and half will say it isn’t. So even when a panel “corrects” a decision, as we often see with red- card appeals, it still doesn’t necessarily mean the initial call was “wrong”.
A crucial way to look at this is that, as football supporters, we all have the emotional pull of bias towards our own team. So when it comes to decisions that go against our beloved favourites it suddenly does become a black and white issue, right versus wrong.
That’s why VAR in its current form fundamentally cannot work. If you use it to reassess fouls then there’s always going to be controversy, there’s always going to be complaints and it will always detract from the spectacle of the sport.
Is that worth it? It really shouldn’t be. Sure, fans, players and managers are going to say daft things all the time and misinterpret the laws. But that’s the point. If it’s always going to happen, and the grey areas are much, much bigger than those in black and white, why do we need VAR? Just for goal- line decisions and offsides? Goals being ruled out for a player being a millimetre offside isn’t within the spirit of the game anyway, and if it was used just for that and having an extra camera down at the goal mouth, would it be worth the expense to our clubs?
In a very literal sense, VAR can get better, but it will never get better to the point where fans are content with its existence until we reach future generations who are just used to it because it’s always been that way.
We shouldn’t let that happen. We shouldn’t give up. We should keep voicing our displeasure but do so more vocally and frequently until our clubs and the governing bodies finally see sense.
Supporters have the power to rid it from our game, but we need to unite to make it happen