VAR Discussion Thread | 2024/25

gingerprince said:
What happened Saturday on Brighton disallowed goal?
VAR screen initially said investigating possible hand ball. Then afterwards said disallowed for
foul? How come ref not sent to screen to confirm that he was in agreement that foul had actually been committed as foul subjective decision.....
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I thought the referee had clearly disallowed it for a foul and the VAR confirmed, so no need for him to go to the screen, as it wasn’t an overturn.

I can’t see any screens from where I sit. So can only assume if it mentioned handball, that was an error.

Not sure if it’s the VAR himself or the home club who would put that info up on the screen? I’d guess the club.
 
gingerprince said:
What happened Saturday on Brighton disallowed goal?
VAR screen initially said investigating possible hand ball. Then afterwards said disallowed for
foul? How come ref not sent to screen to confirm that he was in agreement that foul had actually been committed as foul subjective decision.....
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How come nobody in the stadium had a clue why it was ruled out ?
The very people that the game is aimed at are kept in the dark.
It's shite.
 
Stephen230 said:
Not sure if it’s the VAR himself or the home club who would put that info up on the screen? I’d guess the club.
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Nobody knows. It's all happening behind closed doors. VAR is a multi-headed monster that makes decisions in unknown and inconsistent ways. The communication between the VARs and whomever puts whatever on the screens is guesswork at best. When it comes to VAR, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing, they're making nervous decisions under duress which is why they're so wildly inaccurate and random.
 
Gorton_Tubster said:
Since the date VAR came in, the game, as a product, has got worse. It has become more frustrating, infuriating, over-analysed, confused, pgmol'd to death (Ref's really were never this much of a topic before VAR). It has become more politicised, more contentious. Refs more regularly get death threats. We STILL get the most outrageous incorrect decisions. I think its actually brought the game into disrepute, it's become a funny meme used in adverts for shit stuff.

But for me, and I might be wrong, it feels like football getting more distant from true fans. Like its being taken away from us and monetised etc, and I think VAR is part of that. I mean what happened to keeping the game the same at all levels?

Anyway, given a choice, any football fan would rejoice at VAR being removed, it would be like liberation, like we had a say in our game. Then we would go back to moaning and complaining about refs. It is what we liked to do. But we would never go back to VAR.
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It's definitely not you. We've all witnessed how this has changed football over time, but for one reason or another some have decided it's an improvement and continue to argue for it despite endless evidence to the contrary. To each his own but this is very clearly robbing us of football's soul and its very nature.

You hit on something very important here that I would like to respond to directly.

"what happened to keeping the game the same at all levels?"

This is the most glaring violation of what football has always been about and what very clearly isn't now. We all know how this was always the enduring mantra of football. We've all heard it time and time again, but we definitely don't hear this anymore now do we? What made football so appealing is that it was always played the same way at the grassroots level that it was at the highest level.

VAR has come along and changed all that. And if there's an argument out there that should swiftly cause VAR to be promptly rescinded, maybe it's that. Because everyone remembers that mantra and the importance of it, what that guiding principle meant to all of us. Now that this is no longer the case, that should cause everyone associated with football to come to the realization that something is very wrong and that should cause actions to be taken to bring it back to that, what it's always been until this recent fork in the road.
 
TheBeautifulGame said:
Nobody knows. It's all happening behind closed doors. VAR is a multi-headed monster that makes decisions in unknown and inconsistent ways. The communication between the VARs and whomever puts whatever on the screens is guesswork at best. When it comes to VAR, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing, they're making nervous decisions under duress which is why they're so wildly inaccurate and random.
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Interestingly, perhaps, the VAR on Saturday was one of the new specialist VARs they have been working on creating, who isn’t an elite referee in his own right.

Whether there was wrong info put on the screen. And whether it was his fault if there was, I think it’s definitely a move in the right direction. A good referee isn’t automatically going to be a good VAR.
 
Stephen230 said:
Watched the ‘Mic’d Up’ programme last night, featuring the Haaland handball at Tottenham.

The first thing to note was the confusion mainly caused by the broadcaster over the on-field decision. The linesman immediately calls the handball and the referee goes with that, within a couple of seconds of the ball going in the goal.

The interesting thing was the actual VAR spent about two minutes seemingly convincing himself that there was no handball and sounded like he was just about to recommend the referee re-considers his decision, when the AVAR ( I’m guessing Sian Massey ) suddenly pipes up for the first time with…Is there any proof that he didn’t handball it though?

The VAR then seems to immediately switch track and sticks with the on field decision.

The reason I say that’s interesting was that in a couple of the other clips, it seemed to be the AVAR who was taking the lead in the decision making and the VAR was more or less going with their recommendation.

I’m guessing this isn’t coincidence and is a result of them pushing some assistant referees into being specialist AVARs, which Massey is one.
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Only just caught up with watching this and it leads to the whole debate of VAR and its role.

The liner on the other side of the field, so a good 35 - 40 yards away pipes up with possible handball and a couple of seconds later the ref says no goal, handball. And of course there is no way of him seeing that was the case as his vision was blocked by any number of players. So the protocol now is to defend the on field decision which is no goal due to handball so VAR has to find definitive proof that there was no handball to overturn the decision. The VAR, Graham Scott, had pretty much decided there was no handball after a minute or two and then Sian Massey-Ellis pipes up as you say and then in seconds Scott says to stick with the on field decision. There was no proof of a handball but equally Scott didn't want to see there was any proof of no handball despite him pretty much saying that seconds earlier.
What should have happened is that the ref should have said I can't see any reason to disallow the goal as my vision was blocked and the liner was too far away to make a decision so can you see any reason not to allow the goal. Scott would then have been able to say that there was no conclusive evidence to disallow the goal. Let's be honest Scott as the VAR allowed himself in seconds to be overruled by the AVAR.
 
Although they’ve not confirmed it, it looks highly unlikely that SAOT will be used in the Premier League this season now.

This completely passed me by but in the Bournemouth, Wolves FA Cup game the other week a VAR check took over eight minutes. The longest in England so far. Mainly because SAOT apparently struggles with a ‘congested penalty area’

It’ll be continued to be used in all remaining FA Cup games this season, bar Preston’s quarter final. But it looks like next season now for the Premier League.
 
BlueHammer85 said:
yeh may aswell get grips to it and trial it for some pre season games etc and then have it up and working for start of next season - My only gripe with VAR and have always said this is that they rushed it in the game to quick - any major tech changes should be slowly introduced and trialed at friendly games.
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FIFA approved VAR testing in live games in 2016. It was used in hundreds of games in minor competitions all over the world before it was introduced to the Premier League in ‘19/‘20.
 
Stephen230 said:
I thought the referee had clearly disallowed it for a foul and the VAR confirmed, so no need for him to go to the screen, as it wasn’t an overturn.

I can’t see any screens from where I sit. So can only assume if it mentioned handball, that was an error.

Not sure if it’s the VAR himself or the home club who would put that info up on the screen? I’d guess the club.
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No chance of seeing any screen at some stadiums. Forget which right now.
 
Stephen230 said:
FIFA approved VAR testing in live games in 2016. It was used in hundreds of games in minor competitions all over the world before it was introduced to the Premier League in ‘19/‘20.
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Apparently years and years of testing isn't enough to get it right when it got rolled out. If that doesn't tell you how unfit for use the system is, I don't know what else would. Since '19/'20 we kept hearing, oh it's only the first season of it in the PL, give them more time to iron out the kinks. Now here we are in the 6th system of PL VAR and nearly a decade after FIFA testing started and it's as dysfunctional as ever. You could argue that in some ways it's actually getting worse and more incompetent as time goes on which is hard to fathom given how problematic it was in its early days. It's just a failed system on every quantifiable level, and there's really no way around that at this point. The days of "ohh just give it another year, they'll eventually get it right" are over. We've given it plenty of years to right itself, and nothing is getting better about it.
 
Stephen230 said:
Although they’ve not confirmed it, it looks highly unlikely that SAOT will be used in the Premier League this season now.

This completely passed me by but in the Bournemouth, Wolves FA Cup game the other week a VAR check took over eight minutes. The longest in England so far. Mainly because SAOT apparently struggles with a ‘congested penalty area’

It’ll be continued to be used in all remaining FA Cup games this season, bar Preston’s quarter final. But it looks like next season now for the Premier League.
Click to expand...
I don't know what is worse, the idea that it was planned to be brought in to the Premier League this season and now isn't, due to apparent unforeseen "congested penalty area" problems that were readily apparent in that Bournemouth Wolves match, or the fact that it was planned to be brought in mid-season to begin with. It's hard to imagine how such a congestive player identification problem could be remedied, as it sounds like a cold hard reality of some kind of technology trying to accurately distinguish who's body is who's in a mix of closely packed players. The naive who thought that this would be the cure all for VAR's offside woes are seeing their VAR delusions go up in smoke yet again.

And as to the apparent plan to implement such a drastic change mid-season, or not even mid-season, but merely at some point during the season, what ever happened to the importance of not making changes to the standards of officiating during the competition? Which was repeated throughout the early stages of VAR implementation, out of some important need to only consider changes at the end of a season, to not disturb the season itself with experimental ideas.

This whole idea has seemingly been eroded throughout the VAR saga presumably due to the realization that there are so many glaring problems that they constantly feel a need to make changes to various aspects of it even during the season in order to make it work better. And that's just in regards to what they announce to the public as far as changes. Who knows what kind of in-house changes they've made behind the scenes without announcing it and without anyone knowing what they're doing.

If only someone could come along and make these people realize that what they are trying to do with VAR is not working and the more they try to improve it, the more it seems to only muddy the water as public trust in its usage only further declines as we move forward. This is no way to administer football. The sport is under a dystopian nightmarish technological stranglehold it's about time for a grassroots campaign to come to the rescue and save football's future from the evil clutches of VAR once and for all.
 
TheBeautifulGame said:
Apparently years and years of testing isn't enough to get it right when it got rolled out. If that doesn't tell you how unfit for use the system is, I don't know what else would. Since '19/'20 we kept hearing, oh it's only the first season of it in the PL, give them more time to iron out the kinks. Now here we are in the 6th system of PL VAR and nearly a decade after FIFA testing started and it's as dysfunctional as ever. You could argue that in some ways it's actually getting worse and more incompetent as time goes on which is hard to fathom given how problematic it was in its early days. It's just a failed system on every quantifiable level, and there's really no way around that at this point. The days of "ohh just give it another year, they'll eventually get it right" are over. We've given it plenty of years to right itself, and nothing is getting better about it.
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Mate, they’ve had video officials in the NFL for 40 years and fans are still moaning about it.

There’s not many things I would guarantee in life but one is that if VAR is still a thing in 50 years, our grandchildren will be complaining about how they need to sort that shit out once and for all.
 
Stephen230 said:
Mate, they’ve had video officials in the NFL for 40 years and fans are still moaning about it.

There’s not many things I would guarantee in life but one is that if VAR is still a thing in 50 years, our grandchildren will be complaining about how they need to sort that shit out once and for all.
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Yep even as a VAR ‘lover’ I’ve never once said it will be perfect and flawless, just feel it’s a good idea for refs to get tech help and they should look at ways to improve it season on season - something you couldn’t do with just officials before.
Fans will moan and complain about any form of officiating with or without VAR.
Vast majority of games are perfectly fine, they have sped up the decisions, they are leaving more to the onfield decisions nowadays - something everything demanded.
If there’s 1 VAR controversy in a whole weekend full of fixtures it’s a tidal wave of anger and massively amplified as we live in age of social media where everything is over scrutinised.
 
BlueHammer85 said:
Yep even as a VAR ‘lover’ I’ve never once said it will be perfect and flawless, just feel it’s a good idea for refs to get tech help and they should look at ways to improve it season on season - something you couldn’t do with just officials before.
Fans will moan and complain about any form of officiating with or without VAR.
Vast majority of games are perfectly fine, they have sped up the decisions, they are leaving more to the onfield decisions nowadays - something everything demanded.
If there’s 1 VAR controversy in a whole weekend full of fixtures it’s a tidal wave of anger and massively amplified as we live in age of social media where everything is over scrutinised.
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Hammer, VAR itself and its very nature is the source of the "massively amplified" "tidal wave of anger" which we observe so often nowadays. Social media existed before VAR was introduced and the amount of outrage and controversy on a match to match, week to week basis, was nothing close to what we are experiencing nowadays under VAR.

You're acting like this is all just solely a result of "the age of social media" where everything is over scrutinized. While that's part of it, of course, it's VAR that is "over scrutinizing" referee decisions that is the source of the outrage. Social media reacts to the decisions themselves which have been amplified due to VAR so it becomes a focal point and a lightning rod for everyone to fixate on. Before VAR, there wasn't the type of focal points caused by extended delays to review and then controversial post-review decisions. When matches were flowing pre-VAR everyone on social media weren't all reacting to the same thing at the same time match after match. The outrage wasn't all brought to the forefront in the way that it is under VAR.

I mean, I remember when Leicester won the league which was several seasons before we even knew what VAR was, and in that season there were repeated instances of Jamie Vardy (VAR-dy, no pun intended, the irony though) often confronting referees for contentious decisions.

That was all happening within the flow of a normal match though and those situations were discussed, debated and analyzed by the sports media normally, and social media reacted, but not in the way social media is reacting today to VAR decisions. What you fail to consider is that the dynamic of a VAR decision is very different than the dynamic of reacting to the quite rare pre-VAR howler's howler within the normal flow of a match that would cause everyone to be so unified in reacting to something outrageous like we're seeing now on a consistent basis.

Of course there were contentious decisions and referee errors pre-VAR but VAR decisions create an entirely different dynamic that didn't exist before. And this is what causes everyone to be obsessing over long drawn out controversial decisions in this way over and over again, each time there's a VAR decision. So the regularity of the "unified" fixation on decision and outrage is far more prevalent now with VAR than it ever was before VAR was introduced, throughout the 2010s when there was social media but football was still being played normally.
 
BlueHammer85 said:
Why has the popularity of football only got bigger ?
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Because it is becoming even more global. TV deals mean it is sold everywhere even America now.

VAR hasnt made it popular.

But the game has undoubtedly become more frustrating, confused etc since VAR. Its really lost its way in decision making and the politics around the game that its introduced.
 
Gorton_Tubster said:
Because it is becoming even more global. TV deals mean it is sold everywhere even America now.

VAR hasnt made it popular.
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Likewise VAR hasn’t ’killed’ football like everyone repeats all the time.
Attendances are still high, stadiums are expanding and globally the PL is getting bigger. It’s still the best league by far.
 
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