World Cup: The ref’s rant shows VAR is broken – Here’s why
How the game is stopped to review VAR. “The referee is allowed to stop play to reverse a call or conduct an OFR, but is not supposed to do so when either team is engaged in good attacking possibility.” Yet more ambiguity.
What happens if it is a good attacking possibility? And what happens if that good attacking possibility continues for a couple of minutes of sustained pressure, before the defending team then quickly break on a promising counter attack?
The BEST thing about football is that it’s free-form and free-flowing with potentially, no breaks other than half-time. It’s important that we use the word potential here, unlike its clumsy use in the VAR laws. Because laws should be made accounting for the absolute worst potential situation. In other words, they should think about all the ways that it wouldn’t work, before they think about how it will work.
IMO it’s not a penalty, James Tarkowski has not made a challenge where is he supposed to plant his foot once the Italian player plants his,it is not a clear & obvious error var should not have even got involved they are not their to re-referee the game https://t.co/kPy2mQcKgA
— Mark Halsey (@RefereeHalsey) March 27, 2018
Instead, we’ve got a situation where the same decision in two different circumstances gets treated differently. Let’s use the England vs Italy match as an example :
The Time It Works
A player goes down under a challenge in the penalty area and the ball goes out of play. The referee awards a corner.
VAR involved as Italy get a penalty after England debutant Tarkowski is judged to have clipped Chiesa! pic.twitter.com/LXjapgaFkf
— ITV Football (@itvfootball) March 27, 2018
About THIRTY seconds pass, and then the referee suddenly is alerted to a potential error. FORTY seconds later, he blows the whistle and doesn’t allow the restart of play, instead trotting over to look at a replay (for another FORTY-FIVE seconds, by the way!)
He then reverses his decision and gives a penalty.
Putting the debate about how subjective opinions are and that the game isn’t played in slow motion aside, that works okay, and that’s why a lot of people are saying it’s working. Because it worked once, in that specific scenario.
No one seems to be exploring the possibility that the same situation could have played out very differently…