It nosedived before VAR. Which was a large part of the argument to introduce VAR. I think referee's, particularly in england, were drastically better in the 90's.
Its just so much less disruptive in pretty much every other league in europe.
VAR, Refs and Linesmen | General Discussion
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Its just so much less disruptive in pretty much every other league in europe.
Because it’s changed from a situation where we accept human error to one where that is no longer acceptable. It’s a radical change.
That just isn’t plausible. The referees are miles fitter, always closer to the action and better trained than ever before. The big difference between now and the 90s is the existence of super slo mo replays, from more different angles, analysed over and over again on social media. No wonder the referees seem much worse. It’s a false perception though.
Football fans didn't accept human error before var. They don't accept it now. The radical change is that the refs have can watch replays to make better decisions. If they don't, they're the problem, not the technology.
Yes, for the first time in history no English referees were invited to officiate at the World Cup in 2018 because they were judged to be not good enough. Many of them are still around now, and of those who have retired since nearly all were let loose on VAR when it first came in for 19/20.
Howard Webb was with the PGMOL from 2014-17, the years just before FIFA noticed they were all crap, and has been back there again since 2022.
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Instant replays aren't that recent. They were there in the 90's. Multiple angles aren't even recent, i'd say it was pretty common in the early 2000's. Maybe i should go back and watch some of Collina's matches but i'm pretty certain he'll still be miles and miles ahead of the current crop.
Spain vs Netherlands in 2010 with Howard Webb refereeing was pretty fecking disgraceful. To be fair he was dealing with cynical, cheating cnuts so it was hard to get it right but the argument that instant replays would help and if he saw x, y and z he could have kept the match under control were being made then.
So why put up with the downsides of VAR?
The quality of officiating in PL is laughable, especially considering its wealth. They should vote to pay for PL refs summer classes and external tests at the end of it, first. 
Liverpool support VAR’s continued use in the Premier League next season, of course they do...
Exactly - they now have all possible means available to them to make correct decisions and they still can't do it. Gordon's non-penalty from last night is another good example. Completely understandable that the ref misses it in real time, I did too, but then on the replay you clearly see the trip - and for some entirely unknown reason it wasn't overturned. Same happened with the 3rd Forest penalty claim against Everton - we can all see what happened on the replay and yet VAR decides its not a foul. I don't know how you can train out that level of utter incompetence.
Yeah they did. This fan did. In fact I’d say a silent majority did. There was an extremely vocal minority who were never happy, of course. Goes without saying that the introduction of VAR hasn’t shut them up. Despite the fact that, ironically, it was largely introduced to appease them. All it’s done is shifted their narrative from incompetence to corruption.
I guess we've had different experiences with football fans in general then.
What are the downsides?
I don't even know how to answer this.
Well my point is that there are no real problems with VAR, only with the referees. VAR works exactly as it should.
There's nothing wrong with VAR and a lot wrong with the corrupt and idiotic officials in this country who use it. Maybe have a look into if any of them have received brown envelopes from the Abu Dhabi group rather than scrapping VAR which will enable City to get even more outrageous decisions next season.
Video Assistant Referee. Yes, the problems are mostly with the assistant referee part and their interpretation of the guidelines given to them. Though not entirely of course. Pictures aren't perfect, not high resolution enough in some cases, not always sufficient angles and the frame rates could certainly be higher. I don't know if you follow cricket, but in a situation where you know almost exactly where the significant situation is going to take place, within a meter or 2, they still often rely on snickometer(audio sensing cues) to determine if there was actually contact because the images don't always give the full picture. But even then, tech isn't really the major problem.
Some of the problems could be improved to some degree by a clearer, more concise system and methods of dealing with different situations. With the overall rules of football amended to work with VAR. For example: The handball rules, despite all the tinkering, still aren't clear enough to remove subjectivity. There is no definition for significant player on player contact in different situations. Terms like endangering an opponent are again, entirely subjective. I could go on. This is what I was expecting to see before they introduced VAR.
Plus, of course, if the people you employ are corrupt/biased/idiots then that's not going to help either.
I personally don't think we'll get to a situation where asking people to watch along on a screen will give us consistent results, in a quick enough time frame to be acceptable for general use, in such a fast moving sport as football. Telling the ref to go and watch an off the ball punch that he didn't see? Fine. I couldn't object to that. But as soon as it gets into a situation where a human is looking to correct even just some incidents the ref got wrong, the game slows down too much.
So essentially what we're left with, for me, is wait for a speedy AI based system with close to 100% accuracy and until then we go back to refs on the pitch as the least bad option. We already have goal line tech to help them. And automatic offsides appear to be nearly ready. But this in between ground where we get a small decrease in blatantly incorrect decisions at the expense of long delays, uncertainty and an extra way for officials to show their incompetencies, is just farcical.
For the love of god, scrap VAR.
Football gods hear my prayer.
Just to think of all the goals we haven’t fully celebrated due to being unsure whether it stands or not.
And bring back the aggressive side of english football again. Please.
Football gods hear my prayer.
Just to think of all the goals we haven’t fully celebrated due to being unsure whether it stands or not.
And bring back the aggressive side of english football again. Please.
You think United is going to vote in favor of scrapping VAR ?
Increases any potential bias. They can pick and choose what they review and direct the narrative. It’s shit.
Hawkeye and SAOT improve the game. VAR doesn’t.
Also, they should bring back the official on the edge of the penalty box. It was short lived but very good.
Hawkeye and SAOT improve the game. VAR doesn’t.
Also, they should bring back the official on the edge of the penalty box. It was short lived but very good.
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We have lost 20+ points because of referees and VAR. I don’t know why people love to forget that.
Regardless of VAR or no VAR, we need our club to make statements and go full ”Nottingham Forrest” when it comes to criticism. When it is needed. Our directors, manager, players can’t stand silent.
This is precisely the problem and can be immediately fixed by directing var to review ALL incidents that I mentioned in a previous post.
It’s so fecking simple to remedy (corrupt/inept officials aside but we’ll never solve that one)
Most clubs should. It's a load of bollix that has added nothing game, bring back human errors with refs and the engagement on the bar stools about their decisions.
Apart from you can't celebrate a goal any more and over the top stoppages to see if someone is offside by a toenail.
They arrest you if you celebrate a goal
I can't believe you're a real person. Nice try AI bot !
Knock yourself out kid on what you want to believe
The problem with VAR lies mostly with officials, they're just not making the right calls despite everything being laid out to make their job easier.
We're not going to improve the officials, they're sacrosanct, you must respect them.
If you want to improve officiating then sure, it'll be a great idea, so long as you don't stop the game after every blindly obvious decision, and don't keep calling offside because the fog of someone's breath is over the line they seem to randomly and incorrectly draw on.
Further to this point, more tech should reduce officials, not increase it.
Scrap it and train far less officials to do their job properly.
We're not going to improve the officials, they're sacrosanct, you must respect them.
If you want to improve officiating then sure, it'll be a great idea, so long as you don't stop the game after every blindly obvious decision, and don't keep calling offside because the fog of someone's breath is over the line they seem to randomly and incorrectly draw on.
Further to this point, more tech should reduce officials, not increase it.
Scrap it and train far less officials to do their job properly.
That is definitely true, everything is a conspiracy now, but fans at matches were vocal, "who's the bstard in the black" and similar was heard at every match at some point, the difference then it there wasn't social media to rant on and forums like this weren't readily available for everyone, also the rules have changed quite a bit as well as being stricter. and a lot of modern day fans don't understad half of them!
VAR technology is OK, it could improve of course especially in accuracy and speed but so does every technology. There are two main problems in my opinion:
1) The quality of the referees (there's little to do about it though).
2) The way it is implemented, which affects both officiating (referees don't know when and if to stop the play) and the flow of the game. It should work similar to tennis' Hawkeye: referees make the decisions same as before, but every team gets one chance each game to call for a VAR review to try and challenge the referee's call. If they get it right and the decision changes, they get to use the option to challenge again later. If they don't, they can't challenge any decision later. This limits time wasting, eliminates paused goal celebrations, removes part of the weight from referees backs and forces coaches (or team captains) to think carefully before using a challenge.
1) The quality of the referees (there's little to do about it though).
2) The way it is implemented, which affects both officiating (referees don't know when and if to stop the play) and the flow of the game. It should work similar to tennis' Hawkeye: referees make the decisions same as before, but every team gets one chance each game to call for a VAR review to try and challenge the referee's call. If they get it right and the decision changes, they get to use the option to challenge again later. If they don't, they can't challenge any decision later. This limits time wasting, eliminates paused goal celebrations, removes part of the weight from referees backs and forces coaches (or team captains) to think carefully before using a challenge.
Why is there a general sentiment that nothing can be done to change the quality of refs in England. Are the English never ashamed for being a laughing stock for seemingly not knowing how to officiate the game of football?
I did shit on the officals when posting earlier and I don't think we have a good standard in England currently.
The way VAR is used, and the implementation of it is another factor for me too. The thing is, I haven't got any solutions that would make VAR completely satisfactory to me either.
Not a fan of clear and obvious, whether that's VAR at the time or the VAR independent review panel afterwards. What is clear and obvious to one person isn't to another and the threshold is all a bit murky.
In many ways I'd rather they think in terms of, "On balance, was that a penalty or not? Go and take a look at it.", instead of, "is it clear and obvious that you got the initial decision wrong?" There's an absolutely huge drawback to changing it to that though. The referee would be at his screen much more often, and it would disrupt the flow of the game more than it is currently, and it's bad now.
Makes me wonder if they should scrap VAR altogether.
From some of the audio releases of the VAR discussions released I'm not sure I like some of the things I've heard them saying either. Was watching one recently where they said "I'm going to show you a tackle, that is in my opinion serious foul play and a penalty kick". I know on-field decisions being reversed are currently rare, but maybe that sort of language puts pressure on the referee to do so the times they actually are called to screen? Perhaps they could just tell the referee they've got something they want him to look at without offering an opinion of their own? Only a minor quibble with that one.
Edit for a random one: I just went from here to reading about NFL American football rules and how they use their equivalent of VAR. Was already aware that the head coach can make challenges to decisions and call for replays to be looked at. Some people have suggested that a similar thing should happen in football. Interestingly they're not allowed to challenge subjective decisions for the precise reasons we have lots of problems with VAR. They can only use it for things that are a matter of fact because when they tried to use it for things like holding or pass interference, which would be their equivalent of was there enough contact to give a foul or not, it apparently caused the same kind of massive shit show that we're having now.
The tennis equivalent of VAR, due to the nature of the game can only really about establishing fact too. Maybe we should have kept it to that?
The way VAR is used, and the implementation of it is another factor for me too. The thing is, I haven't got any solutions that would make VAR completely satisfactory to me either.
Not a fan of clear and obvious, whether that's VAR at the time or the VAR independent review panel afterwards. What is clear and obvious to one person isn't to another and the threshold is all a bit murky.
In many ways I'd rather they think in terms of, "On balance, was that a penalty or not? Go and take a look at it.", instead of, "is it clear and obvious that you got the initial decision wrong?" There's an absolutely huge drawback to changing it to that though. The referee would be at his screen much more often, and it would disrupt the flow of the game more than it is currently, and it's bad now.
Makes me wonder if they should scrap VAR altogether.
From some of the audio releases of the VAR discussions released I'm not sure I like some of the things I've heard them saying either. Was watching one recently where they said "I'm going to show you a tackle, that is in my opinion serious foul play and a penalty kick". I know on-field decisions being reversed are currently rare, but maybe that sort of language puts pressure on the referee to do so the times they actually are called to screen? Perhaps they could just tell the referee they've got something they want him to look at without offering an opinion of their own? Only a minor quibble with that one.
Edit for a random one: I just went from here to reading about NFL American football rules and how they use their equivalent of VAR. Was already aware that the head coach can make challenges to decisions and call for replays to be looked at. Some people have suggested that a similar thing should happen in football. Interestingly they're not allowed to challenge subjective decisions for the precise reasons we have lots of problems with VAR. They can only use it for things that are a matter of fact because when they tried to use it for things like holding or pass interference, which would be their equivalent of was there enough contact to give a foul or not, it apparently caused the same kind of massive shit show that we're having now.
The tennis equivalent of VAR, due to the nature of the game can only really about establishing fact too. Maybe we should have kept it to that?
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The last paragraph there is spot on, if the ref is told what you say then he's thinking I just fecked up and almost always reverses the decision, he should be told, watch the replay and make his own judgement
Its mind blowing that a species that sent people to the moon 60 years ago, can't find a AI system that draws a line and execute a simple yes or no instruction. Its 2024.
Wouldn't it be helpful to rewrite the rules to make them more understandable - taking out the subjective element might help. For example, if the ball hits the hand or the hand hits the ball doesn't matter. Intent doesn't matter. I know there would be outrage initially but eventually everyone would understand and it would be clearer all round.
Then players will try to smash balls into defenders hands. The game will be gone 100%
VAR is a great invention. The problem is that many fans are whiny little kids who can’t accept human error or grey areas wherein there’s no clear right decision.
The only way VAR can be acceptable is if they accept handball has to be deliberate and offside is automated. The ridiculous changing of the rule and slowing the footage down to try and give a handball is just mental. I’m yet to see a decision given where somebody’s hand was in a genuinely unnatural position.
The inability to celebrate a goal as you know they will spend 6 minutes deciding whether it’s offside or not is genuinely making it a far worse sport. Something has to be done.
The inability to celebrate a goal as you know they will spend 6 minutes deciding whether it’s offside or not is genuinely making it a far worse sport. Something has to be done.
If we’re accepting human error then just get rid of it? I completely agree that football has grey areas that will never be solved, so what’s the point, just let the game flow and have some excitement back.
Offside is the only part that works and it’s probably the most annoying one when it comes to blocking celebrations. Do a coaches challenge where they can challenge one or two decisions per game.