What if VAR was just a ploy to bring breaks into football to make money from advertising?
SOON after VAR was introduced, those in favour of it and those against it divided into two distinct groups.If a decision went the way of your team, you liked VAR. If a decision went against your team, you were against VAR.
VAR could be extended to checking corners, free kicks and yellow cards under new plansCredit: Getty
What about if they’re in it to change the game in order to squeeze more TV advertising revenue out of it?Credit: AFP
The advantage of this was that we all had a try at being in each group.
We’re shallow like that, us football fans. We even laughed at our own shallowness, chanting: “**** VAR, **** VAR, **** VAR” over and over again when it had disallowed our team’s goal.
But then, perhaps only minutes later after it had disallowed the other team’s goal, we’d chant: “Love VAR, love VAR, love VAR.” It was all very funny.
But now the laughing has stopped. VAR could be extended to checking corners, free kicks and yellow cards under plans by football law-making body IFAB.
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You don’t even get opposing fans goading each other when decisions go against the other lot.
Because we all know it will be our turn in a minute. It has dawned on us all that it’s ruining the game and we’re all going to be on the losing side.
As a West Brom fan, I ought to be enjoying watching Wolves on the receiving end of one terrible decision after another.
There were three more howlers for them on Monday night at Fulham.
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And I just feel plain sorry for them, even angry on their behalf. Yes, a West Brom fan annoyed on behalf of Wolverhampton Wanderers.
This is what it’s come to. Each well-meant tweak to VAR’s operation only seems to make matters worse.
In the interest of eliminating errors, every micro- second of footage is pored over in ever more forensic detail. And what do we seem to get? Yes, yet more howlers.
Before VAR, we only had the man in the middle to blame.
And hard though it sometimes was, we generally found it in our hearts to forgive them their mistakes because they were, after all, human.
By the same logic, we can’t forgive VAR because it feels like it’s not human. It’s to do with bewilderingly clever technology and was set up specifically to counteract the fallibility of humans.
Except, of course, even this logic was flawed as it’s become abundantly clear the technology is only as infallible as the humans in charge of it.
We’re told the development of Artificial Intelligence might result in humans being taken out of the picture completely. In terms of VAR, that could get really interesting.
Perhaps it’s only the human involvement saving VAR from destruction at the hands of the football mob.
Imagine if, instead of humans looking at screens at Stockley Park, there was only a super-clever AI mega-machine.
If this super-computer then started making mistakes, I honestly think football fans could end up marching to Stockley Park and tearing the thing limb from limb, or from chip to chip, or whatever the machine equivalent is of human physiology. And AI will end there and then.
The question is whether VAR can survive long enough for things to get that far.
Perhaps it’s time to write the whole thing off as a noble idea that, despite everyone’s best efforts, simply couldn’t be made to work.
Terrible mistakes
Or perhaps they should stop it for a year in the hope that we’ll go back to despairing of terrible mistakes and demanding video technology all over again.
To try to make sense of the current VAR chaos, I tried a mental exercise.
I considered who it could possibly suit to have longer and longer VAR checks ruining the flow of the game.
And I have an answer. An answer which, I must admit, amounts to nothing more than a conspiracy theory.
I therefore ask you to disregard every word of the following paragraph.
Here’s my conspiracy theory: While we’re all busy worrying about the influence on our game of troubling regimes in oil-rich countries, we’re forgetting to be concerned about the effect on football of the growing amount of American investment.
Around half of the Premier League’s clubs have American money in them.
If they’re in it for the love of the game, that’s nice.
If they’re in it to make money out of the game, that’s not quite so nice.
And what about if they’re in it to change the game in order to squeeze more TV advertising revenue out of it?
I’m sure they’d be chuffed to bits if we switched to playing four quarters instead of two halves.
And here’s the conspiracy bit — what about if these VAR checks got long enough to accommodate a commercial break?
You can just imagine it: Will the goal stand, or will it be disallowed? Join us after the break to find out.
Or no penalty given! But will the ref change his mind? He’s on his way to the monitor! Sit through this message from our sponsor and we’ll tell you what the referee decides.
As I say. Disregard the previous paragraph. It couldn’t happen, obviously. More
