Tuesday night, watching England vs Italy, I got angrier than I’ve ever been whilst involved in football in any of my many capacities. And it wasn’t about the fact that a penalty was given, or that England lost, because frankly I don’t care that much. (It was a friendly!)
VAR is breaking the game that I love and I want it to stop.
I’m a qualified referee, a qualified coach, and a player, just for context. As a player, I’ve seen some bad refereeing. Once I saw a referee who was at least 80 years old who actually couldn’t run, let alone see.
I’ve also been involved in 5-a-side games with no referee which have descended into fights. As a fan, I’ve been furious at refereeing decisions and I’m sure I’m not alone in that.
As a referee, I’ve had to stop a children’s match to go and send parents away from the side of the pitch, who were swearing at children. I’ve had a teacher of a school team who was behaving more childishly than her players.
But this is all trivial. Because they were all about the football; the passion boiling over and the emotions spilling out, or human error, which you can understand, since we’re all human playing the game.
But they are ripping the heart out of the sport I love.
FT: England 1-1 Italy
— BBC Sport (@BBCSport) March 27, 2018
VAR divides opinion again as England concede a late penalty at Wembley.
Reaction: https://t.co/JGgl2Qesoy pic.twitter.com/Kqsch4p4ME
If this was a video game, the community would be up-in-arms and would stop playing the game, tweet, post on Reddit and leave negative reviews until the publishers released another update which fixed the changes. Or, if it’s a football game, they just wait to charge you another £50 for next year’s release.
I’m really worried that in real-life football, however, that this is it, and we’re being led down a gloomy path by a council of eccentric old kooks who thinks it’s fun to tickle sleeping dragons.
It’s not even VAR as a whole concept. It’s just the way they’ve introduced it. I’m almost positive that they were drunkenly throwing darts at an idea board to decide how to do it. It’s had its fair share of criticism already, but after my blood boiled Tuesday night, I sat down and considered exactly why it’s nowhere near ready.