Norway on verge of abolishing VAR

Pogue Mahone

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https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...ing-var-from-domestic-leagues-after-club-vote

It's annoying the way the Noggies seem to be right about almost everything but here we go again.

Shout out to the Swedes too.

For a vision of what might have been, Norwegian supporters only need to look over the border. In July a statement by Svensk Elitfotboll, which represents the sides in Sweden’s top two tiers and acts neutrally on their behalf, announced that a majority of its clubs had been handed a resolution to actively oppose VAR. As in Norway, members run Sweden’s clubs: on this occasion they had been able to mobilise and certify that they wanted their say in general assemblies before any decision was taken. Earlier this year the Swedish Football Association admitted the subject of VAR needs greater scrutiny and resolved not to discuss its adoption until at least the autumn of 2024. It means Sweden, where fans’ views are deemed sacrosanct, remains the only country among Europe’s top 30 leagues that is still holding out.
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Not putting this in mega-thread, which is mainly about specific incidents.

Just goes to show that fan pressure can get rid of this bollox. Should fans in other countries do the same?
 
We get fecked by the officials enough as it is, VAR disappearing would make a bad situation much worse so hopefully this doesn't catch on.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
It's annoying the way the Noggies seem to be right about almost everything but here we go again.
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I disagree with their decision. VAR has come to stay at the highest level. They can remain peasants in their own domestic league, but they must keep the equipment ready for the rare international games.
 
no surprise that a socialist hellhole are quick to try and protect cushy jobs for the boys, instead of having robots do it better, and for free.
 
VAR has potential but it's been extremely poorly implemented
 
I'm on mushrooms and I read the title as Norway on the verge of absolute war

it was a wild few moments
 
Are we sure they actually qualified for it this time?
 
I take some weird VAR decisions over millionairs rolling around the grass pretending someone headbutted or poke then in the stomache.

I like that most of the issues have been focused on the actual game of football.
 
Big Ben Foster said:
VAR has potential but it's been extremely poorly implemented
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Agree with this. It's being used (not as bad as when it first came in) to over officiate games. It needs a 30 second decision limit as to whether it's clear and obvious, and if the two refs can't agree in that time, then you play on.

The offside drawing of lines is also embarrassing. I thought we were getting the automated offside mid season, but seems not at the minute.
 
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People always say the issue with VAR is the officials not VAR itself, but I don’t necessarily agree.

The main issue, and the reason fans are fighting back, is because it completely kills the match day experience. You can’t celebrate a goal without fear of it being ruled out. That’s down to the principle of checking goals retrospectively. That’s not what football is about, the reason it’s such a popular sport is that sudden rush of a goal.

Although yes, the clown officials look at barely contentious goals for ages deciding what to rule it out for, and often make poor decisions, zapping the fans excitement.

There have been so many situations, including correct decisions or decisions in our favour like the Coventry winner last season, where you just can’t believe how this amazing game and amazing moments are being sterilised by over analysis and technology. The fact it’s happening and poor decisions are still being made is genuinely self harm to the sport. It has to go.
 
RaddyRed said:
Agree with this. It's being used (not as bad as when it first came in) to over officiate games. It needs a 30 second decision limit as to whether it's clear and obvious, and if the two refs can't agree in that tome, then you play on.

The offside drawing of lines is also embarrassing. I thought we were getting the automated offside mid season, but seems not at the minute.
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Yup, if something takes longer than that to determine, then by definition it can't be "clear and obvious".
 
Within mere months we'd have a "I want VAR back (for good)" thread.

The actual issue with VAR is it gives these people an additional thing to moan about. My solution, get rid of the ref so we're back to moaning about one decision maker rather than two.
 
Offside said:
People always say the issue with VAR is the officials not VAR itself, but I don’t necessarily agree.

The main issue, and the reason fans are fighting back, is because it completely kills the match day experience. You can’t celebrate a goal without fear of it being ruled out. That’s down to the principle of checking goals retrospectively. That’s not what football is about, the reason it’s such a popular sport is that sudden rush of a goal.

Although yes, the clown officials look at barely contentious goals for ages deciding what to rule it out for, and often make poor decisions, zapping the fans excitement.

There have been so many situations, including correct decisions or decisions in our favour like the Coventry winner last season, where you just can’t believe how this amazing game and amazing moments are being sterilised by over analysis and technology. The fact it’s happening and poor decisions are still being made is genuinely self harm to the sport. It has to go.
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Correct, and does so whilst achieving nothing. The people that whinged about referees are still whingeing about referees, just now they're whingeing about VAR officials as well. Because they're whingers and they always will be. They use the guise of 'it's important to have the correct decision', but what they really want is for decisions to go the way they want them to go, and because that will never happen whatever the system they will always whinge about it. Always.
 
What's the status of the automated offside thing? Didn't they use it in the last WC or trial it during another summer competition?
 
It’s like wanting to get rid of all cars because of emissions, rather than investing in public transport, cleaner cars, walkable cities, etc.

The technology is not the problem here, it’s getting all refs familiar with the right ways to use it.

Norway and Sweden and every country in the world will sooner or later have VAR, but the way VAR is used everywhere will improve over time.
 
I'd abolish it in its current form it doesn't work

I think they set things up to empower the refs

but the mindset should be to better the game

if it doesnt better the game its not worth it
 
That one game recently without VAR, where 2 handed handballs were being missed, reaffirmed for me that things are better with VAR.
 
Personally I really dislike VAR. We spend just as much time complaining about decisions as we ever did. The complaints were not a reflection of the quality of refereeing, but rather a reflection of how invested in our teams we are as fans. We're always going to complain about the rub of the green. The only difference being that the debate is about micro-decisions, as we hyper analyse every incident and rule out goals for a toe being offside.

However, the genie out of the bottle now, I don't think you can go back.
 
VAR is just a replay tool. A good one that is. Unbiased replay

If armed with 360 angles and the man behind the screen is still making error in judment then the fault is not the technology.

If you can't judge a match with VAR then how can you possibly do it live with no replay? Referees are human they dont have x-ray vision and i bet most of the time they dont see the actual incident clearly and just judge by context and experience.

We all watch football on big screen and still need replays to see what's going on. They just need to fix the quality of the refs
 
711 said:
Correct, and does so whilst achieving nothing. The people that whinged about referees are still whingeing about referees, just now they're whingeing about VAR officials as well. Because they're whingers and they always will be. They use the guise of 'it's important to have the correct decision', but what they really want is for decisions to go the way they want them to go, and because that will never happen whatever the system they will always whinge about it. Always.
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Exactly! If it completely eliminated errors then I could maybe accept it, but it doesn’t. If anything it’s genuinely more contentious now, just with the added bonus of not being able to celebrate a goal because they work out whether it’s offside after.

It’s completely ridiculous. Yet FIFA took ages to implement goal line technology when that has a 100% certainty of a correct decision and actually allows fans to celebrate goals instantly. It’s so obvious what place there is in football for what technology and VAR is a serious step too far, to the point where the game is declining as a spectacle.
 
I'm positive a version of VAR that improves football could exist, so I'm not sure about binning it altogether.

However so far the trade of not having instant decisions in return for better decisions hasn't worked, because the decisions haven't improved enough.
 
I'd love for a challenges system to come in. It would add to the spectacle and as a match going fan you can give shit to managers who call it and don't get the decision.

Just imagine an infuriated Klopp/Pep/Arteta throwing down their flag and then not getting their way.
 
The main problems are not to do with VAR, and it's not just the referees and officials, a big chunk of the problems are do do with how vague rules get interpreted.

The handball rule is a good example, WTF is a 'natural' position of an arm for example? Interfering or not in offside decisions is another

Essentially a lot of rules need to be defined better and leave less room for differing interpretations
 
Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Give a man a fishing rod and he'll snap it up for firewood or throw it at a pigeon or something. What I'm saying is, referees and the people who pay them don't know how to fish, are miserably cold, and hate avian wildlife. They're just bad people.
 
"These idiots can't use the technology, let's put all our trust in them making the right decision in a split second !" Congrats Norway.
 
As someone said: VAR completely kills the experience, and the experience - not milimetre justice - is the heart and soul of football.

There is a good point that technology use per se is not the issue. Goal line tech works just fine. In the future I’m sure offside line tech will become almost as intstantaneous at top level, and then no one will bother.

The issue is the fallacy that human judgement can be eradicated or perfectes by tech so as to remove all error. It can’t be done, and ironically the transparency around several refs discussing among them and tries to operate visual media in a reasonable fashion just undermines even more the trust in the justice process. People are more angry about judgements now than they were when refs called a shot in five seconds and was more or less within reason most of the time.

I’m all for hawkeye tech when it’s actually fast functioning and sparsely used (like in tennis), but video review of every second and every kind of breach is madness in a sport where there are hundreds of gray area infringements in every game (Enough holding? Enough obstruction? Enough intent? Enough contact? Enough goal threat? Enough enlargement of body? Enough impeding the flow of the game? Enough wasting of time? Dangerous enough play? Enough part of situation leading to a goal?), and where thousands of different people still are necessary to have different interpretations of the rules due to ever new ‘improvements’. Every time I hear a discussion over a hand ball judgement and go in to actually check both the rules of the game and the official guidelines for interpretations, the most striking thing is that no one in the discussion have the same idea of the what the rule actually is currently. Not the ref, not the VAR ref, not the refereeing spokesperson from the FA, not the Expert pundits in dtudio, not the commentators on TV, and not the managers nor the players who are actually supposed to follow the rules. No one can keep up, it’s a mire of apparent huge errors produced as an effect of a misplaced idea that error is possible or even always desirable to eradicate.

The important is that reffing is swift and fair. Video is a great help for reviewing games for refs to learn and refereeing bodies keeping refs in check to protect from bad reffing, partizanship or match fixing, but it is a terrible means to use for almost all types of in game judgements.
 
Red in STL said:
The handball rule is a good example, WTF is a 'natural' position of an arm for example? Interfering or not in offside decisions is another.
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Slightly off topic, but I couldn't agree more.

Any position where the arm doesn't suffer damage must surely be natural, right?
 
Not sure about dropping VAR but I wouldn’t mind dropping Michael Oliver from being anything to do with it.
 
didz said:
Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Give a man a fishing rod and he'll snap it up for firewood or throw it at a pigeon or something. What I'm saying is, referees and the people who pay them don't know how to fish, are miserably cold, and hate avian wildlife. They're just bad people.
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8 in 10 pedestrians are killed by back seat drivers.
 
duffer said:
The 30 second thing would give them too much room to simply not make a decision at all.
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That's literally what people want from var, fewer decisions. Especially on offsides.

30 secs decision time and only change offsides, if it is over 50cms mistake, would resolve most of the issues people have with var.
 
They're right VAR is awful, slows the game down, you still get mistakes and it just leads to more controversy about decisions. Game is much better without it as you see in the early rounds of the cups.

Just keep the goal line technology, that also has a small margin of error but that'll come in to play very infrequently.
 
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