Delayed offside calls raise red flag for VAR
THE ADVISORS and technical bods who shape the rules of football plan to hold a virtual brainstorming session on October 6.
The gonks of the International Football Association Board (IFAB) could meet every day between now and Christmas and they still couldn’t come up with a more annoying rule than the delayed offside flag.
Inflation, mortgage rates and the price of a tank of petrol might be more pressing concerns right now. But every time a footballer is allowed to gather the ball four yards offside, advance on the keeper and take a pointless crack at goal, it feels like another three minutes has been knocked off the life of fans howling for the flag to go up.
Ukraine’s Artem Dovbyk is a striker who plays off the shoulder of defenders and that worked pretty well the night he stayed onside just enough to hammer the final nail into Scotland’s World Cup coffin. When the teams played again in the Nations League on Tuesday, he showed all the spatial awareness of a four-year-old careering around a bouncy castle.
Oleksandr Petrakov’s contract as Ukraine coach lapsed before the 0-0 draw in Krakow. His only chance of keeping his job was one of his forwards showing enough guile to break down Scotland’s defence and claim top spot in Group B1. With Dovbyk making Ryan Porteous look like the new Franco Baresi, the old boy had no chance.
Every time the striker moved too soon — pretty much always — the Greek assistant referees kept their flags down till the last second. And once again you found yourself cursing the bright spark who thought VAR was a great idea.
The problem here is that Video Assistant technology needs the late offside flag to function properly. It’s the only way it makes sense. To correct a glaring mistake, an attack on goal really needs to reach some kind of conclusion.
The assistant who assumes Dovbyk is offside and flags straight away will be right 99 per cent of the time. He’s like a bin bag on a motorway. But once in a blue moon — like at
Hampden in June or ahead of Craig Gordon’s save the other night — the Dnipro forward (below) will actually find a way to co-ordinate his eyes, brain and feet at the same time. And if the assistant referee sticks his flag up and gets that wrong, there is no way of delivering justice to the team robbed of a goalscoring opportunity. The only way of avoiding a miscarriage of justice is to let a promising attack lead to a crack at goal. Conscious of this stuff driving fans round the twist, the English Premier League introduced new guidance this season. Assistants were told to delay the flag going up if there was a clear goalscoring opportunity or the call was extremely tight.
FIFA will also try to minimise the number of annoying late offsides at the World Cup finals via semi-automated VAR. A camerabased system of Artificial Intelligence should allow the lead video assistant to see almost instantly if a player is in an offside position, determine if he’s active and notify the refereeing team on the pitch — thereby allowing the flag to go up as soon as possible.
So long as VAR exists there’s no real way of ending the curse of late flags in some form. They’re a necessary evil. All football can do is drive down the length of time fans spend screaming at assistant referees to get their finger out.
And while Artificial Intelligence solves the problem for a World Cup finals hosted by an oil rich sheikhdom, it doesn’t do much for countries like Scotland muddling along with bang average broadcast deals.
Clubs in the SPFL spent years harumphing over the cost of VAR before finally agreeing to stump up the cash to introduce it next year. As things stand, four clubs in the Premiership don’t even have a big screen to let fans know when a VAR check is taking place. The chances of semi-automated robot technology being rolled out at the Tony Macaroni Stadium in Livingston are non-existent.
To cut the threat of assistant referees becoming the victims of drive-by gun crimes in Qatar, FIFA is telling them to stick their flag up ASAP when an offside is blindingly obvious. Someone at UEFA could have done everyone a favour by issuing the same guidance to the Greek pair manning the lines at UkraineScotland the other night.
Dovbyk was so far offside at times he could have reached out and grabbed a hot dog from the stands. And while brainless forwards do wonders for the transfer value of Ryan Porteous, they do nothing at all for the blood pressure of supporters screaming at the linesman to raise his blasted flag.