World Cup: The ref’s rant shows VAR is broken – Here’s why
If you were timing it, like I did, it took one minute and thirty-nine seconds from the challenge to the award of the penalty. One minute and thirty-nine seconds of standing around and waiting for watching fans.
For one incident. Let’s say there are (because there could easily be) ten incidents that need reviewing in a match. That’s almost FOURTEEN minutes spent standing around and waiting. We only get ninety in a match!
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So we’re potentially either losing fourteen minutes of play (and that’s without any situations like the one we looked at before that could see play continue on for a minute or so before a review is even conducted.) or they’re adding on fourteen minutes of added time, just for VAR. If I was a player, I’d be starting to work on my fitness.
Whichever scenario you want to go with, losing the minutes or adding them on, it simply doesn’t work with the game that we all love. It breaks it up too much, it loses the in the moment nature of emotion, joy and passion and EVEN then, it can all result in decisions that we are left debating as to whether or not they were correct.
I actually wanted to write this article immediately after the game, but I thought to myself, no, calm down and write it rationally from tomorrow. I was calm when I began writing. Having written the article, I’m now furious again. Mainly because I went on Twitter and saw too many people judging it based upon this one situation rather than the potential.
I don’t blame them for that, but I think more people need to evaluate the bigger picture. I am really, really scared for the World Cup.