How to fix VAR
Arsène Wnger
Matt Cross responds to Arsène Wenger’s plans to overhaul the offside law, and sets out his vision for the future of VAR in football.
Over the last decade, the clamour to introduce technology into football — from players, managers and fans alike — reached deafening, un-ignorable levels. Nonetheless, it’s fair to say that the debut season for the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) in the Premier League has brought more than an ounce of controversy. In fact, a recent YouGov survey showed that two thirds of Premier League viewers feel that VAR has made the game less enjoyable, whereas, the same poll reveals an overwhelmingly favourable view of technology in other sports such as tennis, cricket and rugby. If these sports have their systems nailed down, why is football’s version so unpopular?
It was never going to be easy. If you consider those sports where technology has flourished, there is little room for ambiguity in the rules: in tennis, the ball is in or out; in cricket it’s either nicked the bat or it hasn’t. But with many of the incidents in a football match, you could see countless replays from every angle at a frame-by-frame speed, and you could still call it either way. Was the forward wrestled to the ground by the opposing player or was that a reasonable amount of contact? Was that defender the last man or would the right-back have covered the ground in time? Never mind, it seems the aglet of the attacker’s bootlace was offside — as confirmed by these big chunky dots drawn perpendicular to this offside line that’s about 10 centimetres wide.
Of course we have had goal line technology in football for several years now and no one would say that that hasn’t been a positive change for the game. It’s fast, decisive, and reliable. VAR is none of those things. When written into the laws of the game in 2018, VAR was intended to operate under a philosophy of ‘Minimum interference, maximum benefit’ providing a way to correct “clear and obvious errors”. Yet the root of the anger felt towards VAR this season stems from the fact that it is overturning marginal decisions — not the “clear and obvious”.
VAR must recognise that some decisions are just too tough to call with the technology currently available. One Twitter user showed via a back-of-the-envelope calculation how demonstrably absurd it is for offsides to be awarded by millimetres when the margin of error is of the order of inches. When the television cameras operate at 50 frames per second, a speed merchant such as Raheem Sterling could cover 20 centimetres between two frames. How on earth do you get around this problem?
The solution that has been put forward by FIFA’s new Chief of Global Development, Arsène Wenger, proposes a drastic change to the offside rule whereby any part of the body that can score a goal has to be level or behind the last defender to be deemed onside, i.e. there has to be daylight between the forward and last man. Many are hailing this as an inspired intervention from the former Arsenal boss, but don’t be fooled. This solves nothing. A line still has to be drawn when there’s a tight call - only instead of the dotted line coming down from the attacker’s armpit, we’ll see it coming down from their heel. What’s more, by changing such a fundamental law you cause an unnecessary amount of disruption for millions who play the game across the globe, in an attempt to solve a problem only relevant to the elite leagues.
Cricket is very good at accepting that its technology isn’t perfect. If Hawkeye predicts that less than half the ball is hitting the stumps in an LBW review, it gives the benefit of the doubt to the on-field officials. Football should take a similar approach. When reviewing a tight offside call, they should draw their two lines as they do now with one for the attacker and one for the last man. If the two lines have any overlap — even if not by much — stick with the on-field decision. If there’s daylight between the two lines, then VAR should have the power to intervene, because that’s clear and obvious.
I also feel there’s an argument to switch to a “challenge” system like we see in cricket and tennis whereby each side’s captain has a certain number of incorrect challenges they can use — say, two per match — and the television officials only spring into action when called upon. This will completely change the public perception of VAR from an overly interfering, precisionist killjoy to a saviour we call upon at times of great need. And, as we’ve seen in cricket, the will-they-won’t-they moment when a team is weighing up whether or not to review a decision makes for dramatic viewing. You can just imagine the raucous crowds baying their side to challenge the referee whilst furiously cutting rectangular shapes with their hands. Who’d want to be a captain? Regardless, I think this would bring a really interesting dimension to the game and take the heat off VAR officials.
In the short term, the fan experience needs to be addressed so that those watching are kept in the loop on the decision-making process. Get the video assistant referees microphoned up and show the supporters in the stadium what they’re seeing. Transparency is key.
Watching football can be an immense emotional investment and thus far too important to have refereeing howlers shaping the outcome of matches. As a Southampton fan, I was at Wembley in 2017 when a faulty offside decision cost us our first major trophy in over 40 years, and I wouldn’t wish that raw feeling of injustice upon anyone. So although discontent in VAR is growing, I pray that the rule makers of the game don’t give up on it. If nothing else, what else would we talk about at the water fountain?
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