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World Cup: The ref’s rant shows VAR is broken – Here’s why

By John-Patrick Quinn

LONDON, ENGLAND - MARCH 27: Referee Deniz Aytekin checks the VAR during the International friendly between England and Italy at Wembley Stadium on March 27, 2018 in London, England. (Photo by Catherine Ivill/Getty Images)
LONDON, ENGLAND - MARCH 27: Referee Deniz Aytekin checks the VAR during the International friendly between England and Italy at Wembley Stadium on March 27, 2018 in London, England. (Photo by Catherine Ivill/Getty Images) /
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Same situation, except this time, the ball doesn’t go out for a corner. The keeper collects it, and quickly punts the ball downfield where Raheem Sterling is running clean through after Italy have pushed too far forward.

Thirty seconds later, the VAR is looking at the original challenge and says to the referee ‘you might want to review that challenge in the penalty area.’ The referee can’t stop play to reverse his decision or conduct an OFR, because the game has moved on and England are looking like they might score. They keep up the pressure, they begin to push men forward themselves as they passed it around and looked for a cross into the box.

The cross comes in, but Donnarumma this time claims it and punts it forward where Italy now have a 3 v 3 situation. The referee still can’t stop play to review the decision, which was a good minute and a half ago.

Italy’s attack breaks down, and with a quick counter attack, Marcus Rashford runs clean through and is brought down with a horrible tackle using excessive force, denying him an obvious goalscoring opportunity.

This is a perfectly feasible situation, which opens up a whole can of VAR worms. 

  • Does the referee even go back and check the original decision which he was advised to? Because if he doesn’t, how is that fair or consistent? As we saw, if the ball had just gone out, he would’ve actually ended up giving a penalty.
  • Does he deal with the red card offence, because denying an obvious goal scoring opportunity is a dismissal, and it was a challenge which used excessive force too? (another reason for dismissal)
    What happens if he sends the Italian player off, and then awards Italy a penalty retrospectively? The Italian player would never have made the challenge if the penalty had been awarded in the first place, how can that make sense?
  • What happens to all the time that was played in between, as well as the minute and a half the referee used to review the footage? Is that all added on at the end? Because that’s around five minutes you have to add-on for one incident, and it’s not as if the players have been resting in that five minutes. You’re now asking them to play for longer.

This list of issues goes on and on, but the main issue for me is that so much of the game now could be played pointlessly. If the referee can go back and change a decision that happened two or three minutes ago, on the advice of the VAR, there’s a real risk of that, which loses us a lot of game time.

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