VAR Discussion Thread | 2024/25

BlueHammer85 said:
No but it was the point being made that the game is stopping to much - so made the point that punishing players for kicking ball away and time wasting means it’s all quicker, also the subs rule change was a good idea. Also mentioned average VAR check now takes 40 seconds, whereas last season it was one minute and six seconds. Hopefully that can be improved season on season.
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Why should the players be punished? They weren't the ones stopping the game!

It wasn't their time wasting that was the source of the complaint. The complaint was against VAR and how it (VAR) was stopping the game too much. The solution? Start punishing the players for time wasting? This is an insane shifting of VAR's responsibility on to the players.

This is why VAR is so damaging to the sport. Not only is it failing on such a scale but it is causing other bad changes to attempt to shirk their responsibility into feeling a need to be more stricter of the players for time wasting. This is sending football down a dark and dangerous road and we need to come out of this and reverse course.
 
danielwood5 said:
How many times do you remember this happening in the 7 years pre-VAR? You always say that there were ridiculously obvious offside goals given "all the time", what instances can you remember from the 7 years pre-VAR?
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He is talking about offsides that looked debatable on first sight and were later proved by slow motion TV cameras to be offside, conveniently forgetting that the large proportion of decisions were right, and that now they are checked for two to three minutes.

The question isn't whether more decisions are right now, compared to before. They fucking well should be. The question is whether the interruption to the flow of the game is worth it for the extra 5-10% of the decisions they claim to get right.

I'm with @TheBeautifulGame on this. VAR needs a complete rethink. If people want VAR it should be checking and making all the decisions. Checking corners? It's not principled, it's just reactive. Why not throw-ins? Why not free-kicks in the middle of the park, yellow card, red card or no additional sanction. They can all lead to goal-scoring opportunities within a phase of play. Referees call? Why, FFS? If it's a mistake in the eyes of VAR, just correct it. Anything.

Forget this ridiculous pretence that VAR isn't re-refereeing the game.It's artificial and doomed to fail. Just embrace it if that is what you want. The way the game is refereed now is a complete bastardisation, neither one nor the other. Just let VAR tell referees when they get something wrong. Anything. It would be complete carnage, of course, but, if you want VAR, just welcome it. The game will be unwatchable but it will cut out these stupid mistakes that are being made.

Or would it? Narrator's voice: No it wouldn't because it's a game with subjective rules that would still be being interpreted by fallible humans.

Just bin it and let's all shout at the referees again. It's just a fucking game.
 
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It’s funny to me that VAR will use AI to say that MacAllister was onside by an inch, but COMPLETELY IGNORES the fact that he was open because he pushed off his marker immediately before he ran into the ball.

However, it did a great job of showing the handball was inside the penalty area, but wasn’t actually a handball. I’ve no idea if that was the reason they called him to the monitor, but it was the correct outcome and took some actual backbone to correct his mistake.

It’s like the fact that Gigi got a mitt on the ball against B’mouth negates the fact that he was held so he couldn’t simply time his jump and get a good fist on it, let alone simply use his size to come and catch it!
 
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halfcenturyup said:
I'm with @TheBeautifulGame on this. VAR needs a complete rethink. If people want VAR it should be checking and making all the decisions. Checking corners? It's not principled, it's just reactive. Why not throw-ins? Why not free-kicks in the middle of the park, yellow card, red card or no additional sanction. They can all lead to goal-scoring opportunities within a phase of play. Referees call? Why, FFS? If it's a mistake in the eyes of VAR, just correct it. Anything.
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The challenge is to design a system that addresses all your concerns whilst minimizing disruptions. And what we've learned after many years of VAR is that lip service and promises about how it's going to work is meaningless without imposing strict conditions on their ability to interrupt or disrupt a match. When you leave them with the power to interrupt the match as they please like they have and to make decisions without any accountability, well what we've seen is the result.

A major pillar of a rethink would seem to be the understanding that we need to strongly limit the power that VARs currently have to interrupt a match as they please. They should not have that power. What they should be reviewing in my estimation should be strictly factual. They should have no role in deciding if penalties or fouls are the right decisions unless called upon in my view. And they should only be called upon very rarely and in my estimation, perhaps, only as a result of manager's challenge. And as far as corner kicks and goal kicks, I do think that could be checked automatically behind the scenes without much of a problem given its nature but what happened the other day wouldn't have been perfectly corrected from a simple corner / goal kick decision so even that needs to be thought out. There are certain things that are mostly or entirely factual that aren't being checked by VAR, like corners / goal kicks. I've been thinking a lot about this so if you would like to have out that rethink I would be happy to do so.
 
TheBeautifulGame said:
The challenge is to design a system that addresses all your concerns whilst minimizing disruptions. And what we've learned after many years of VAR is that lip service and promises about how it's going to work is meaningless without imposing strict conditions on their ability to interrupt or disrupt a match. When you leave them with the power to interrupt the match as they please like they have and to make decisions without any accountability, well what we've seen is the result.

A major pillar of a rethink would seem to be the understanding that we need to strongly limit the power that VARs currently have to interrupt a match as they please. They should not have that power. What they should be reviewing in my estimation should be strictly factual. They should have no role in deciding if penalties or fouls are the right decisions unless called upon in my view. And they should only be called upon very rarely and in my estimation, perhaps, only as a result of manager's challenge. And as far as corner kicks and goal kicks, I do think that could be checked automatically behind the scenes without much of a problem given its nature but what happened the other day wouldn't have been perfectly corrected from a simple corner / goal kick decision so even that needs to be thought out. There are certain things that are mostly or entirely factual that aren't being checked by VAR, like corners / goal kicks. I've been thinking a lot about this so if you would like to have out that rethink I would be happy to do so.
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A lot is made of the statistical improvement in decision making that VAR has brought with it but based on the average of 4.4 VAR interventions a game the non fouls on Gigi and Josko in the Bournemouth and Villa games mean that 22% of the VAR decisions in these games were wrong. They wont be classified as wrong though, so I never trust the figures quoted.

I would prefer a system where the Ref has VAR there to check things if (s)he wants to. It needs to be no more complex than that.

Add to that goal line technology and offside technology if (and only if) the margin of error of the technology is transparently published alongside it
 
The concept of VAR is brilliant i.e. eradicating blatant errors from the game. Anyone remember the goal scored by Spurs at the Swamp when Carroll dropped the ball two foot over the line but it wasn't given, or the Maradona goal against England, the Henry handball against Ireland etc. We now have goals disallowed because a player's toe is literally an inch offside despite the technology being used not good enough to determine this. We also have people manipulating the system for their or someone else's means. Whether it's to manipulate a spot bet or an overall result I am not sure but VAR isn't helping the overall game. Take the West Ham penalty given then overturned at the weekend. The Newcastle player barely touched the ball whilst wiping out Bowen, same as Pope against Arsenal. It now looks like the barest touch on the ball will mean no penalty awarded, the precent has been set on two separate occasions yet we Gvardiol being pushed over by Rodgers and no mention. Arsenal at pretty much every set piece pushing, blocking and holding, all fouls yet nothing given. The LOTG change not only from week to week but even during a game! It's the people operating it that's the problem as well as the fact nobody knows exactly what VAR is meant to look at or not.
 
The Marseille vs Atalanta had a controversial ending.
I thought Marseille had a clear enough case for a penalty.
The Atalanta defender miscontrolled the ball and it bounced up and hit his hand. The players were claiming a penalty as Atalanta went on the break and scored.
VAR then started looking at the penalty incident but went with the refs decision.
 
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