VAR thread 2022/23

[TheBeautifulGame]

In that case it’s just the length of time it takes for the decision in this instance

I want VAR to stay - but fans will eventually lose patience with the game if you have to wait ages for a decision after a crucial goal has been scored

It seems that you're starting to see the problem with VAR. Taking ages to make a decision : that's what VAR does. That's how VAR works, that's what VAR is. Yes, the longer the delay, the worse it is, because you are excruciatingly waiting for "permission" to celebrate or to breathe a sigh of relief. That waiting and waiting and waiting for a subjective decision doesn't work for the football fan. Sure, a 4 minute delay is more aggravating than a 3 minute delay which is more aggravating than a 2 minute delay. But by the time the decision is made, after any amount of time, the moment has gone. The moments that we live for as football fans is lost.

Now if we want to say "but it's more important to get the decisions right". There's no guarantee they're gonna get the decisions right by making us wait and wait and wait. But one thing we are guaranteed is the inability to be able celebrate in the moment organically. In many cases they take a perfectly good decision and turn it into the wrong decision, without any explanation whatsoever.

We can't let the fact that the decision went against a rival in Spurs stop us from being honest about the situation. The tribalism aspect to these decisions is what VAR feeds off of. Looking at the sequence, we know that was a perfectly good goal. The player who received the cross was clearly onside, the ball was kicked backwards, went off a defender forward. Now, Harry Kane was "about level" when the ball as it was kicked backwards. Part of his body was just in front of the defender, part of his body was in-line with the defender. There was no "daylight" now was there that we hear all the time about how offsides needs to be changed. Kane stayed "enough" onside for me, what what do I know? The ball was kicked back anyway. Imagine being offside by a backwards pass as you were pretty much level then deflected forward to you off the defender.

After something like this, I don't wanna hear anyone acting like offsides is black and white, that you're either on or you're off. No no no, offsides is often very subjective and subject to reinterpreted and changes "laws" many of which have been changed in order to accommodate VAR. Also you may have noticed in the slow mo replays that the defender even pushed Harry Kane. Kane didn't go down, and it probably wouldn't be enough to warrant a penalty in real-time, but if we're splitting hairs on endless super-slow mo replay, why couldn't that have been ruled a penalty on VAR. If you really want to split hairs here, if you wanna get technical, you could argue that Kane was actually pushed forward into an offsides position by the defender as he was fouled trying to stay onside. The point is, all this is wildly subjective.

That was not "clear and obvious" offside. You could watch that sequence and come up with a variety of subjective decisions, each of which someone would disagree with. But the fact is that the ball was hit backwards as Kane was "about level". And if you wanna say he was onside, he was being kept from being completely onside by being fouled forward by the defender. This VAR process is atrocious. That's a horrible goal-reversal. We may be happy about it as City fans but it's the wrong decision. It just is. We all know deep down that was a goal, and that beautiful moment for Spurs, as much as it pains us as City fans, absolutely should have stood. And it is highly farcical for that to be chalked off. It's an embarrassment for all footballers. VAR must be put out to pasture.

 

[TheBeautifulGame]

Is there any system of officiating that isn’t shit ?

Yes. Officiating without VAR. You know, the normal way it has been done all our lives before this mad scientist experiment was cooked up.

 

[TheBeautifulGame]

I'd like to further illustrate the problem that VAR has caused to the understanding of what offside is within the context of the laws. As you may know, over the summer FIFA has redefined the idea of a deliberate play of the ball as it pertains to when a phase is deemed to reset and if situations like this would be offside.

FIFA has changed the rule for offside in football

Corrections made to the concept of “deliberate ball play” FIFA and the International Football Association Board (IFAB) have adjusted Law 11 – on the offside – to minimize di…

darik.news

Not only has this rule been tweaked earlier this year, but the very word deliberate play with the ball was only introduced into the laws six years ago.

FIFA and the International Football Association Board (IFAB) have adjusted Law 11 – on the offside – to minimize disputes over the point of “deliberate play with the ball”. It appeared in regulation six years ago, when football rules were changed in favor of attacking players.

So this rewriting and reinterpreting of the laws was part of the agenda put into play by the FIFA President in order to change the laws to make VAR work.

See this topic from 2017:

Intent

I hope this is OK but I'd like to take up on a point that was raised in another thread that has now been locked. It's the question of intent. In that thread, it was stated: We need to lose the ideas of intent as the word has been removed from the laws. As referees we cannot judge intent -...

www.refchat.co.uk

OFFSIDE
Though the actual words deliberate or intentional do not appear in the wording of the offside Law the original Victorian distinction has been revived in FIFA's interpretations. If a ball from attacker number 8 (say)is played through to another striker (9) in an offside position, but en route a defender attempts to clear it with a kick, but it spins off the defender's boot straight to the number 9 attacker, there is question of whether this resets offside or not. back in the day the slightest accidental touch by the defender played the attacker on. Then it started to be interpreted that the defender needed full control of the ball before attackers benefited from a miss pass. Now FIFA make clear that any DELIBERATE play on the ball, even if it wildly mis-cues, resets offside.

HANDLING
In this Law the word Deliberate keeps its older meaning of a deliberate act, rather than an intended outcome. Hence a player running in with arms spread wide, and the ball hitting an arm, would likely be guilty of a handling offence because of a deliberate act, even if handling was not clearly intentional.

This reminds us that not only were the words "deliberate or intentional" as it pertains to offsides deflections not part of the original Victorian laws, but that these new terms and interpretations were put into place under this FIFA President, as part of the VAR agenda. So back in the day, or more precisely, before this FIFA President, the laws as they were would have seen this simply as a touch that would have played Kane on, even if he was deemed offside from the backwards header.

That's why there's such confusion and outrage over all this. Because most people may not remember that based on the traditional laws before VAR and all the VAR-induced law changes, this would have definitively been onside. So we need to understand that not only is VAR the problem, but it's directly led to law changes that are now in conflict with how the laws were before VAR. So not only is VAR being used to chalk off goals in bizarre ways, but they are using the changes to the laws that were introduced for VAR purposes to justify chalking off goals.

These types of rule changes that now are used to make VAR decisions were put into effect under the direction of the FIFA President. So even if you ignore the push by the defender, even if you consider Kane slightly offside, when the ball was headed backwards, you still have a situation that under the laws as they were previous to this FIFA President, it still would have been seen as an accidental touch that would have reset the phase and played Kane on.

This cannot be understated enough that these law changes were put into effect for VAR, and now used to chalk off goals that under the traditional pre-VAR laws could never have been done. Under the traditional pre-VAR laws, this is clearly not offside OK.

Another thing I want to point out is that if you watch the slow mo replay, in addition to the push onto Kane by the defender (that could have theoretically been considered a foul and a penalty), it also appears that the header backwards may have hit off the defender's hand as it was deflected forward. It looks as though it hit off his upper leg and may have grazed his hand.

Well, as we know, the rule on handballs in a situation like this has flip flopped since VAR was introduced, particularly handballs in the penalty area. Before they changed the law earlier this year due to the outrage over balls hitting hands in the box, to now only call penalties for deliberate handballs in the box, before that change, this could have been deemed to be a penalty simply for the deflecting off the hand of the defender, even though it wasn't deliberate.

So the introduction of the word deliberate put into the laws by this FIFA President in order to make VAR decisions (supposedly) easier to make have directly resulted in this goal being chalked off, on several levels, all of which were the result of law changes that were put into place to help VAR. It's a riot what's been done here.

 

[Blue Mist]

Yeah, but it was Spurs.

True, I have since seen the goal and I did smile........
Smile ! I laughed and said to myself 'if I knew what de ja vu was, I'd say it'


:-)

 

[TheBeautifulGame]

And one more thing on this. The fact that the ball was played backwards off the header is important. Many claimed that this didn't matter. But in effect it does, because it's not just Kane being slightly ahead of the last defender when the header was played backwards, it's also whether he was ahead of the ball as it was being headed backwards.

From the VAR offside snapshot, it's not clear that any part of Kane was ahead of the ball at that point of the header. For VAR to conclude that Kane's forehead was ahead of the front of the ball as it was headed adds to the controversy. I suspect that this "ball to forehead" measurement may have been what caused the extended delay and what was ultimately used to chalk off the goal.

 

[Txiki Txiki Bang Bang]

Dedicating this one to all the Spurs fans out there.

 

[Bluekiwi]

Sure and it will get quicker, but if you watch cricket, there are quite a few instances of “waiting for ball tracker to load” or “best side on angle”.

That may be so but at least the on-field umpire has asked for the reviews not like the FIFA implementation where the VAR official intervenes. And having intervened why does it then take them so long to decide what to instruct the ref to review?

 

[Bluekiwi]

I love var.

I wait for your next hilarious one-liner!!

 

[Bluekiwi]

But why on earth would they want to listen to the commentary in the first place?

To make sure the comments align with the instructions in their brown envelopes.

 

[TheBeautifulGame]

The Varce Continues in Madrid :

A penalty was awarded after the full time whistle had gone, for a handball in the box off a deflected header from a corner.



Game is gone. Remember how the handball law changed earlier this year to only award penalties for deliberate handballs now. Well then what about this shenanigans? Player who's thumb grazed off the deflected header was in mid-air trying to use his left arm to rebalance himself. There's no way you can conclude that was deliberate, given how fast the ball was coming in and how it had just been deflected off a header. It was a complete coincidence that his thumb managed to nick that deflected header before deflecting off his teammates shoulder.

The fact that a VAR check was ordered and a penalty given after the final whistle floors me. This is a complete mockery of this sport. We hear so much about how VAR is run so much better in other parts of Europe than in the Premier League. I haven't seen anything this horrendous in the Premier League and that's saying a lot.