5 Reasons VAR Is Ruining Football

Behold, you are being watched, every move you make is scrutinised by a group of men in a secluded room far, far away. At their behest, a call is made and your dreams are crushed. Nobody is safe.

A quote from George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, perhaps? Or maybe a historical account of life in Stalin’s Soviet Union? Whilst one would be forgiven for assuming either of these, this is in fact what modern day football has become under the scandalous surveillance regime that is the ‘Video Assistant Referee’ (VAR).

Today, football may be the most lucrative sport there is, with mediocre players earning in a week what NHS nurses earn in a year. Traditionally however, it finds its roots in working class culture: The simplicity with which two jumpers can become goalposts and the sport’s immunity to any climate are just two things that attest to how simple, adaptable and welcoming the beautiful game really is.

But this hospitality has come under strain, with such mass appeal bringing conflict. Enter the referee: a ‘neutral’ judge? Maybe not, for their controversy has made way for the leviathan of ‘control-room refereeing’. As a result of its severe overuse, it sinks hearts, kills the flow of the game, and pulls the rug out from underneath its exciting unpredictability. Moreover, it’s not even 100% accurate!

Make no mistake, no matter your team, this is not based on a few isolated cases. It is the death of football as we know it.

Let’s face it, who would want to be a referee? Surely someone who likes football enough to run around the pitch for 90 minutes in their mid-30s would feel frustrated not being able to touch the ball. They suffer verbal, sometimes physical, abuse from players and fans. When having a bad day, they are scapegoated, receiving hate mail and a place on the tabloid back pages, and when they do a good job, they are forgotten. Could you even name a referee?

Despite all this, they are essential. Or were. Today the referee is no longer the master, but the servant, no longer alert, but asleep. Before VAR, a marginal offside call or a slide tackle inside the box would ring alarm bells in the referee’s head as he came quickly to a decision. But there is no need for this level of concentration anymore, for all the ref has to do now when unsure is tune into his earpiece and wait for the decision of his superiors who have the benefit of the replay. They are puppets, their strings pulled by a group of retired referees hidden in a room somewhere probably sipping away at a mojito.

We cannot have our cake and eat it. Referees are becoming a waste of time, money and energy: either we scrap VAR and hand full authority to the ref or the latter’s role will suffer the same fate as shop-workers with the invention of self-checkouts.

In such a scenario, who would be left for the players to harass?